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Cy^IFORNIA- 
AND BACK 





To California 
and Back 



By C. A, HIGGINS 



Illustrations by 
J. T. McCUTCHEON 






PASSENGER DEPARTMENT ^^'^-^^^^^^^^"^^~\ , / 



SANTA FE ROUTE 
CHICAGO, 1893 



•H^ 



^ u. 



Copyright, 1893, 
13y Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. 




^ Prin'tersT^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Advertisement 5 

I. Preliminary Stages 7 

II. New Mexico ii 

LAS VEGAS hot SPRINGS ^^ 

SANTA FE 20 

PUEBLOS 25 

PENITENTES 30 

III. Arizona 31 

CHALCEDONY PARK 34 

MOQUIS 35 

CANON DIABLO 38 

FLAGSTAFF 39 

SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN 40 

GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO 44 

CLIFF AND CAVE DWELLINGS 47 

CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ARIZONA 48 

IV. Southern California 50 

OF CLIMATE 53 

SAN DIEGO AND VICINITY 6l 

CAPISTRANO 68 

STORY OF THE MISSIONS 70 

LOS ANGELES 77 

PASADENA 81 

RIVERSIDE AND VICINITY 82 

REDONDO AND SANTA MONICA 82 

SANTA CATALINA ISLAND 84 

SANTA BARBARA 88 

OSTRICH FARMING QO 

WINTER SPORTS 9I 

3 



CHAPTER PAGE 

V. Northern California . 94 

SAN FRANCISCO 95 

CHINATOWN 98 

SANTA CLARA VALLEY I08 

LAKE TAHOE 112 

VI. Nevada and Utah 113 

OGDEN 115 

SALT LAKE CITY Il6 

GREAT SALT LAKE 122 

VII. Colorado 124 

GLENWOOD SPRINGS 125 

SEVEN CASTLES AND RED ROCK CANON .... 129 

HAGERMAN P.\SS 129 

LEADVILLE 130 

BUENA VISTA 133 

GRANITE CANON 134 

CRIPPLE CREEK I34 

pike's PEAK REGION 139 

MANITOU 141 

ASCENT OF pike's PEAK 144 

COLORADO SPRINGS 147 

DENVER 149 

VIII. Homeward 150 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The proprietary lines of the Santa Fe Route extend, un- 
broken, through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, southeastern 
Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and California to the Pacific 
Coast, and compose the major portion of a through return 
route by way of Nevada, Utah and Middle Colorado, in the 
following order: 

Betwceii Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico, 

Atchison, Topeka Ssf Santa Fe Railroad {Santa Fe 
Systeju). 

Between St. Louis and Albuquerque, 

St. Louis &f San Frajtcisco Railway (Santa Fe Sys- 
tem) to Burrton, Kansas, and Atchiso7t, Topeka b' 
Santa Fe Railroad beyond. 

Between Albuquerque and Barstgw or Mojave, California, 
Atlantic ^ Pacijic Railroad (Santa Fe System). 

Between Barstow and Los Atigeles, Sati Diego and all points 
in California east, sruth and west of Los A ngeles. 
Southern California Railway [Santa Fe System). 

Between Los Angeles atid San Fra^tcisco, California, 
Southern Pacific Railroad by way of Mojave. 

Between San Francisco and Ogden, Utah, 
Central Pacific Railroad. 

Betweeft Ogden and Grand Junction. Colorado, 

Rio Grande Western Railway by way of Salt Lake 
City. 

Between Grand Junction and Colorado Springs, Colorado, 
Colorado Midland Railway {Saftta Fe System). 

Between Colorado Springs and St. Louis, 

Atchison, Topeka £r= Santa Fe Railroad to Burrton, 
Kansas, thence St. Louis &f San Francisco Railway 
(Santa Fe System). 

Between Colorado Springs and Chicago, 

Atchison, Topeka df Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe 
System) . 

The circuit of these lines constitutes a comprehensive tour 
of the West, whose merits it is desired to bring more particu- 

5 



lady to the attention of tourists^tand whose attractions are the 
subject of the following pages. The necessity of compressing 
a theme of large proportions into a space of reasonable bounds 
has embarrassments which are only in part avoided by exclu- 
sion of innumerable matters well worthy to be included. It 
would be a simpler task to fill twice as many pages. Adequate 
treatment of a tenth of the number of admitted topics would 
exceed the limits set to the present volume. All omissions, 
therefore, and any neglect of particular localities, must be 
charged to a plan which perforce is fragmentary in outline and 
restricted by the very extent of its scope to a brief setting 
forth of only the most contrasting of the more notable scenes. 

With this apology to the Great West the book is tendered. 
It is in no sense a guide-book, but explicitly an attempt to 
present the merits of a relatively few selected typical features 
for the consideration of those who weigh the high opportuni- 
ties of travel. 

The illustrations are from original sketches, and from pho- 
tographs by Curran of Santa Fe, Osbon of Flagstaff, Slocum 
of San Diego, Tabor of San Francisco s.'aA Jackson of Denver. 







/ / 



PRELIMINARY STAGES. 




|HE California Limited pulls out of Dear- 
^--^^.k^otI born Station in Chicago at an hour of 
l-^^^ the night when many of its passengers 
are already tucked away behind the cur- 
tains of their berths. There is little to be seen 
through the darkness, even if one cared to keep 
awake. By day the adjacent country for a few hun- 
dred miles would appear a level or mildly undulat- 
ing region, rich in agricultural products, and relieved 
by bits of stream and forest and by small villages, 
with here and there a considerable city, such as 
Joliet, and Streator, and Galesburg. It is greater 
than the whole of England and Wales, this State of 
Illinois, but a very few hours' ride is sufficient to 
bring one to its western boundary, the Mississippi 
River. This is crossed at Fort Madison, and the 
way continues across the narrow southeastern cor- 
ner of Iowa into Missouri. While gliding through 
the State last named the traveler awakes to sight of 
a rolling country of distant horizons, swelling here 
and there to considerable hills, checkered with tilled 
fields and frequent farm-houses, divided by small 
water-courses and dense groves of deciduous trees. 
Not one whose scenic features you would travel far 
to see, but unexpectedly gratifying to the eye;. full of 
gentle contrasts and pleasing variety. At the lofty 
7 






Sibley bridge crossing of the Missouri River the swift 
sand-laden volume of this famed stream flows far be- 
low the level of the eye, and there is wide outlook 
upon either hand. On the farther side the way skirts 
bold bluffs for a considerable distance by the side of 
the broad and picturesque river that is reminiscent 
of the days of a greater steamboat commerce. Then 
comes Kansas City, the great commercial gateway of 
the Missouri. The Kansas border lies just beyond, 
the entrance to that State leading by the serpentine 
way of the river of the same name, generously fringed 
with groves and affording glimpses of rugged wood- 
land scenery which by degrees gives place to the open 
prairie. 

The billowy surface of Kansas was once the bed 
of a vast inland sea that deposited enormous quanti- 
ties of salt, gypsum and marbles, and its rock strata 
abound in most remarkable fossils of colossal ani- 
mal life: elephants, mastodons, camels, rhinoceroses, 
gigantic horses, sharks, crocodiles, and more ancient 
aquatic monsters of extraordinary proportions, fright- 
ful appearance and appalling name, whose skeletons 
are preserved in the National Museum. Its eastern 
bound was long the shore of the most stubborn wil- 
derness of our possession. The French fur- traders 
were the first to establish footing of civilization in 
Kansas, the greater portion of which came to us as 
part of the Louisiana purchase. Sixty-five years 
ago Fort Leavenworth was created to give military 
protection to the hazardous trade with Santa Fe, and 
the great overland exodus of Argonauts to California 
at the time of the gold discovery was by way of that 
border station. The first general settlement of its 
eastern part was in the heat of the factional excite- 
ment that led to the Civil War. It was the scene of 
bloody encounters between Free-soil and Pro-slavery 
colonists, and of historic exploits by John Brown and 
8 



the guerrilla Quantrell. In the space of one gener; 
tion it has been transformed as by a miracle. Th 
mighty plains whereon the Indian, antelope and buf- U 
falo roamed supreme are now counted as the second 
most important agricultural area of the Union, and 
its uncultivated tracts sustain millions of cattle, 
mules and horses. Vigorous young cities of the 
plains are seen at frequent intervals. Topeka, with 
broad avenues and innumerable shade-trees, is one 
of the prettiest capitals of the West. The neighbor- 
hood of Newton and Burrton is the home of Men- 
nonites, a Russian sect that fled to America from the 
domain of the Czar to find relief from oppression. 

Burrton is the junction-point with the converging 
line from St. Louis through Southern Missouri and 
Southeastern Kansas, whose topography is of the 
same general description, pleasingly pictorial in fre- 
quent foliage and running water, with villages and 
cities encircled by productive fields, gardens, vine- 
yards and orchards. 

At Hutchinson one enters Western Kansas, and 
from this point for a long distance the road follows the 
windings of the Arkansas River, with only occasional 
digressions. Dodge City, of cowboy fame, and Gar- 
den City, the scene of Government experiments in 
agriculture, are the chief centers of this district. 

Colorado first presents itself as a plateau, ele- 
vated 4,000 feet above the sea. Soon the land- 
scape begins to give hint of the heroic. Pike's 
Peak is clearly distinguishable, and the two beautiful 
Spanish Peaks hover upon the horizon and reappear 
long after the first-named has faded from view. 
Slowly the Raton Range gathers significance direct- 
ly ahead, until it becomes a towering wall, at whose 
foot lies the city of Trinidad, beyond which begins 
the final ascent to the first of many lofty mountain 
gateways, the Raton Pass. The grade is terrific, 
9 ..- .___. 




^^A*' 




and two powerful mountain engines are required to 
haul the .train at a pace hardly faster than a walk. 
The vicissitudes of the pass are such that the road 
winds like a corkscrew, turning by curves so sharp 
the wheels shriek at the strain. From the rear ves- 
tibule may be had an endlessly varied and long-con- 
tinued series of mountain-views, for the ascent is no 
mere matter of a moment. There are level side 
canons prettily shaded with aspen, long straight 
slopes covered with pine, tumbled waves of rock 
overgrown with chaparral, huge bare cliffs with per- 
pendicular gray or brown faces, and breaks through 
which one may look far out across the lower levels 
to other ranges. A short distance this side the sum- 
mit stands what is left of the old toll-house, an 
abandoned and dismantled adobe dwelling where 
for many years the veteran Dick Wooten collected 
toll from those who used the wagon-road through the 
pass. Both ruin and trail are of interest as belong- 
ing to the ante-railroad period of thrilling adventure, 
for by that road and past the site of the dilapidated 
dwelling passed every overland stage, every caravan, 
every prairie schooner, every emigrant and every 
soldier cavalcade bound to the southwestern country 
in early days. Beyond this is a wide-sweeping 
curve from whose farther side, looking backward 
down the pass, an inspiring picture is unfolded to 
view for a passing instant — a farewell glimpse of the 
poetic Spanish Peaks at the end of a long vista past 
a ragged foreground of gigantic measure. Then the 
hills crowd and shut off the outside world; there is a 
deep sandstone cut, its faces seamed with layers of 








coal, a boundary-post marked upon one side Colo- 
rado and upon the other New Mexico, and instantly 
following that a plunge into a half-mile tunnel of 
midnight blackness, at an elevation of something 
more than 7,600 feet. 

At such a Rubicon the preliminary stages may 
fairly be said to end. 




NEW MEXICO. 

[LTHOUGH your introduction is by way 
of a long tunnel, followed by a winding 
mountain-pass down whose steep incline 
the train rushes as if to regain the low 
level from which the journey was begun, you will 
find New Mexico a Territory in the sky. If its 
mountain-ranges were leveled smoothly over its val- 
leys and plains the entire area of more than 120,000 
square miles would stand higher above the sea than 
the summit of any peak of the Catskills or the Adi- 
rondacks. Its broad upland plains, that stretch to a 
horizon where wintry peaks tower high above the 
bold salients of gray-mottled foothills, themselves lie 
at an altitude that in the Eastern States mifst be 
sought among the clouds, and at no time will you 
fall much below an elevation of 5,000 feet in travers- 
ing the portion of the Territory that lies along the 
present route. 

II 









i'vi'S. 



j4 



\. 



The landscape is oriental in aspect and flushed 
with color. Nowhere else can you find sky of deeper 
blue, sunlight more dazzling, shadows more intense, 
clouds more luminously white, or stars that throb 




AW' ' 








with redder fire. Here the pure rarefied air that is 
associated in the mind with arduous mountain-climb- 
ing is the only air known; dry, cool and gently 
stimulating. Through it, as through a crystal, the 
rich red of the soil, the green of vegetation and the 
varied tints of the rocks gleam always freshly on the 
sight. You are borne over mountains above forests 
of pine and fir, with transient glimpses of distant 
prairie; through canons where fierce rock- walls yield 
grudging passage and massive gray slopes bend 
downward from the sky; along level stretches by the 
side of the Great River of the North, whose turbid 
stream is the Nile of the New World; past pictur- 
esque desert-tracts spotted with sage; and past mesas, 
buttes, dead volcanoes and lava-beds. These last 

12 



are in a region where you will see not only mountain- 
craters, with long basaltic slopes that were the an- 
cient flow of molten rock, but dikes as well: fissures 
in the level plain through which the black lava oozed 
and ran for many miles. These vast rivers of rock, 
cracked, piled, scattered in blocks, and in places 
overgrown with chaparral, are full of interest even 
to the accustomed eye. They wear an appearance 
of newness, moreover, as if the volcanic action were 
of recent date; but there has been found nothing in 
native tradition that has any direct bearing upon 
them. Doubtless they are many centuries old. 
Geologically their age is of course determinable; but 
geology deals in rock epochs; it talks darkly of mill- 
ions of years between events, and in particulars is 
careful to avoid use of the calendar. It is well to 
remember that the yesterday of creation is singularly 
barren of mankind. We are practically contempo- 
raries of Adam in the history of the cosmos, and all 
of ancient and modern history that lies between is a 
mere evanescent jumble of trivialities. Dame Nature 
is a crone, fecund though she be, and hugging to her 
breast the precious phial of rejuvenescence. Her 
face is wrinkled. Her back is bent. Innumerable 
mutations lie heavy upon her, briskly though she 
may plot for to-morrow. And nowhere can you find 
her more haggard and gray than here. You feel t'r.at 
this place has always worn much the same aspect 
that it wears to-day. Parcel of the arid region, it 
sleeps only for thirst. Slake that, and it becomes a 
garden of paradise as by a magic word. The present 
generation has proved it true in a hundred localities, 
where the proximity of rivers or mountain-streams 
has made irrigation practicable. The confines of the 
Great American Desert are narrowing rapidly. Do 
but reflect that a quarter-century back the journey 
you now make in perfect comfort was a matter of 
13 





wild adventure, at cost of months of arduous travel 
and at hazard of life, not only because of human 
foes, but for scarcity of food and water. One never 
appreciates the full stride of American progress until 
he has traversed such a Territory as this in a Pullman 
car, where Valley of Death and Journey of the Dead 
are names still borne by waterless tracts and justified 
by bleached bones of cattle and of human beings. 
Rescued from the centuries of horror and planted in 
the front rank of young rising States by the genius 
of our generation, New Mexico is a land of broad 
ranges, where hundreds of thousands of sleek cattle 
and countless flocks of sheep browse upon the nutri- 
tious grasses; where fields of grain wave in the 
healthful breeze; where orchard-trees bend under 
their weight of luscious fruits, and where the rocks 
lay bare inexhaustible veins of precious metals. 
Here may be found to-day as profitable ranches as 
any in the country, and innumerable small aggrega- 
tions of cultivated acres, whose owners sit comfort- 
ably upon shaded verandas while their servants till 
the field. This is the paradox of a region whose 
softer scenes will often seem to be overborne by 
bleak mountain and desert and lava-bed; that if you 
own ten acres of irrigated land here you are that 
much-vaunted but seldom-encountered individual, an 
independent farmer. You may smile in a superior 
way when you hear talk of the profits of bank-stock. 
You may look without envy upon the man who is 
said to own a gold-mine. 

Scattered by the way are sleepy Mexican villages, 
ancient Indian pueblos, still inhabited, and those 
older abandoned ruins which give to the region its 
peculiar atmosphere of mystery. The history of 
New Mexico formerly began with a pretty legend 
that dated back to a time in Spain when a sovereign 
fighting amid his native mountains found himself 
14 




hemmed in by the enemy, and would have perished 
with all his army had not one of his enterprising sol- 
diers discovered an unsuspected pass, the entrance to 
which he marked with a bleached cow's skull that lay 
convenient to his hand, and then returning led a re- 
treat through the pass to safety. By order of the 
grateful king the family name of the soldier was 
thereupon made Cabeza de Vaca — cows head — to 
celebrate so opportune a service. It is to be hoped he 
got a doubloon or two as well, but on that particular 
head tradition is silent. At any rate, among the 
soldier's descendants a talent for discovery became a 
notorious family trait. It amounted to a passion 
with them. You could not get into any difficulty but 
a Cabeza de Vaca could find you a way out. Nat- 
urally, then, when Narvaez set sail from Spain for 
the Florida coast, three and a half centuries ago, he 
took one of that family along for a mascot. The 
expedition came to grief on the Florida reefs, but the 
mascot survived, and with him three others who had 
wisely clung to his legs when the ship went to pieces. 
Stranded upon an unknown coast, menaced by hos- 
tile Indians, an ocean behind and a wilderness be- 
fore, this Cabeza de Vaca felt his heart strangely 
stirred within him. He gave no thought to the dan- 
gers of his situation; he perceived only that he had 
the opportunity of a lifetime to discover something. 
So, remembering that in far Mexico his fellow-coun- 
trymen were known to dwell, he pretended to pull a 
long face and told his companions that to reach the 
Mexican settlements was the only hope of surviving. 
Then brandishing his sword in a becoming manner 
he called to them to come on, and led them across the 
unexplored continent of North America, in the year 
of grace 1536, by a route that incidentally included 
what is now known as New Mexico. Thus, in sub- 
stance, runs the legend, which adds that he had a 
15 










queer tale to tell, on arrival, of Seven Cities of Cibola, 
and outlandish people of heathen appearance and 
notions, but of temperate and industrious habits 
withal, and presumably rich in treasures of silver and 
gold; which incited Coronado to send out an expe- 
dition under Marcos de Nizza in 1539, and a year 
later himself to take charge of the first real invasion, 
conquering native towns by force of arms on his way. 
But in the light of modern historical research Ca- 
beza de Vaca's local fame dwindles; his head dimin- 
ishes. It is denied that he ever saw New Mexico, 
and the title of discoverer is awarded to Marcos de 
Nizza. It does not really matter, for in either event 
the conquest was by Coronado, in whose footsteps 
Spanish colonization was first enabled to advance into 
the Territory, which, it should be remembered, was 
for a long time thereafter a vaguely defined area of 
much greater extent than to-day. The Franciscan 
friars early began their work of founding missions, 
and in the course of time established forty churches, 
attended by some 30,000 native communicants. 
These natives revolted in 1680, and drove the Span- 
iards out of the Territory, resisting their return suc- 
cessfully for a period of twelve years. From the time 
of their ultimate subjection (1692) the country grew 
in population and commercial importance until, early 
in the present century, its trade with Missouri and 
the East became very valuable. The route traversed 
by pack-mules and prairie schooners loaded with 
merchandise will forever be remembered as the Santa 



Fe Trail, and was almost identical with that followed 
by Coronado. It is at present, for the greater part 
of the distance, the route of the Atchison, 'ropeka& 
Santa Fe Railroad between the Missouri River and 
vSantaFd; and through Western Kansas, Southeastern 
Colorado, over the Raton Pass, and at many points in 
New Mexico may easily be seen from the train. The 
distance was 800 miles, and a round trip then con- 
sumed 1 10 days. Merchandise to an enormous value 
was often carried by a single caravan. In sp^te of 
the protection of a strong military escort the trail was 
almost continuously sodden with human blood and 
marked by hundreds of rude graves dug for the muti- 
lated victims of murderous Apaches and other tribes. 
Every scene recounted by romances of Indian warfare 
had its counterpart along the Santa Fe Trail. The am- 
bush, the surprise, the massacre, the capture, the tort- 
ure, in terrifying and heart-breaking detail, have been 
enacted over and over. Only with the advent cf the 
railroad did the era of peace and security begin. To- 
day the Apache is decimated and harmless, and with 
the Pueblo Indian and the Mexican forms a romantic 
background to a thriving Anglo-Saxon civilization. 
It is this background that gives New Mexico its 
peculiar charm to the thoughtful tourist; not alone 
its tremendous mountain-ranges, its extensive up- 
lands, its fruitful valleys, or its unsurpassed equa- 
bility of climate. Its population includes 8,000 
Pueblo Indians, 25,000 Navajoes, 1,300 Apaches, 
and 100,000 Mexicans; and among the last named 
are as noble types of cultured and progressive man- 
hood and womanhood as can be found anywhere in 
our civilization. 




LAS VEGAS HOT SPRINGS. 

The little Rio Gallinas issues by a tortuous path 
through rugged tree-fringed canon-walls from a spur 
17 



of the Rockies half a dozen miles northwest from 
the city of Las Vegas. Upon its banks, at a point 
just above where it debouches upon the vegas, or 
meadows, numerous springs both cold and hot rise 
to the surface in close juxtaposition, their waters 
charged with a variety of chemical ingredients. The 
medicinal virtues of these springs, supplemented by 
the attractiveness of their location upon a shoulder 
of the mountains, and the mildness and purity always 
characteristic of New Mexican air, led to the erection 
of the spacious and beautiful Hotel Montezuma, and 
the establishment there of a health and pleasure 
resort. It has, moreover, become a sort of half-way 
resting-place for transcontinental travelers. It is one 
of the few places in the Middle West where a stranger 
can find contentment day after day in comparative idle- 
ness. The immediate scenery has not the prodigiously 
heroic qualities of the more famous Colorado resorts, 
but it is endlessly attractive to the lover of nature in 
her less titanic moods. If you love the pine and 
the fir, here you may have your fill of them. If you 
are fond of a bit of precipitous climbing, you can 
find it here on every hand. And if you are for quiet 
shaded nooks, or lofty pulpit-perches that overhang 
a pretty clattering stream in deep solitudes, here they 
abound. And from the adjacent hilltops are to be 
had wide-sweeping views eastward over the vegas and 
westward over rocky folds to where the blue masses 
of the mountain-chain are piled against the sky. 
There are wagon-roads winding over hill and through 
glen, past the verge of canons and penetrating deep 
into the forest, and narrower branching trails for 
the pedestrian and the horseman. Who fails to 
explore these intimately will miss the full charm of 
Las Vegas Hot Springs. It is a place in which to 
be restfully happy. 

The merits of this spot and of New Mexico gen- 








:* - 




i 



erally, for the invalid, are more specifically treated in 
" llie Land of Simshine," to which the interested 
reader is referred. Here it must suffice to say that 
every known form of bath is administered in the' 
bath-house at the Springs, and the equable air and 
almost unbroken sunlight of the long peaceful day 
are themselves a remedy for physical ills that are 
incurable in the harsh climes of the North and East. 
It is not, as might be inferred, a place of distressful 
heat, but a land of soft golden light whose parallel 
is the most perfect day of a New England spring. 
And although the environment of the Montezuma 
represents the climax of natural remedial conditions, 
joined to comfort and luxury, the whole Territory is 
a supremely healthful region, containing numerous 
special localities that differ in elevation and in con- 
sequent adaptation to the requirements of the com- 
plications of disease. Raton, Springer (where at 
Chico Springs a sanitarium has been established). 
Las Vegas proper, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque, all 
are health-resorts of high merit along the present 
route through New Mexico. South of Albuquerque 
are several admirable resorts of lower altitude, such 
as Las Cruces, in the Mesilla Valley, and EI Paso, 
in Texas. 



SANTA FE. 

In 1605 the Spaniards founded this city under the 
name La Ciudad Real de la Santa Fe de San Fran- 
cisco (the True City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis), 
which, like many another ponderous Spanish title, 
has been reduced to lower terms in the lapse of time. 
The extraordinary interest of its early days is kept 
alive by monuments which the kindly elements pro- 
tect from the accustomed ravages of the centuries. 
The territorial governor to-day receives his guests 
in the same room that served visitors in the time of 




^li ^rll^tft' 




21 



the first viceroy. Seventeen American and seventy- 
six Mexican and Spanish rulers have successively 
occupied the palace. It has survived all those 
strange modulations by which a Spanish province 
has become a territory of the Union bordering on 
statehood. The story of the palace stretches back 
into real antiquity, to a time when the Inquisition 
had powers, when zealous friars of the Order of St. 
Francis exhorted throngs of dimly comprehending 
heathen, and when the mailed warriors of Coronado 
told marvelous uncontradicted tales of ogres that were 
believed to dwell in the surrounding wilderness. Be- 
neath its roof are garnered priceless treasures of that 
ancient time, which the curious visitor may behold. 
There are faded pictures of saints painted upon 
puma-skins; figures laboriously wrought in wood to 
shadow forth the Nazarene; votive offerings of silver, 
in the likeness of legs, arms and hands, brought to 
the altar of Our Lady by those who had been healed 
of wounds or disease; rude stone gods of the hea- 
then, and domestic utensils and implements of war. 
There, too, among innumerable relics, may be seen 
ancient maps of the New World, lettered in Latin 
and in French, on which California appears as an 
island of the Pacific, and the country at large is con- 
fidently displayed with grotesque inaccuracy. 

Nearly a mile distant from the palace, on an emi- 
nence overlooking the town, stands the old Chapel 
Rosario, now neighbored by the Ramona school for 
Apache children. In 1692 Diego de Vargas, march- 
ing up from the south, stood upon that hill with his 
little army of 200 men and looked over into the city 
from which his countrymen had been driven with 
slaughter a dozen years before. There he knelt and 
vowed to build upon the spot a chapel for the glori- 
fication of Our Lady of the Rosary, provided she 
would fight upon his side that day. The town was 
, 22 





carried by assault after a desperate contest of eleven 
hours' duration, and the chapel was built. It savors 
quaintly to us of a less poetic age that those royal 
old adventurers should have thought themselves hand 
and glove with the celestial powers; but they certain- 
ly made acknowledgment of services supposed to have 
been rendered, upon occasion. 

There areotherplacesof antiquarian interest, where 
are stored Spanish archives covering tw^o and a quar- 
ter centuries and numerous paintings and carvings 
of great age; the Church of Our Lady of Light, the 
Cathedral of San Francisco, and finally the Church 
of San Miguel and the Old House, isolated from 
everything that is in touch with our century by their 
location in the heart of a decrepit old Mexican village. 
Here, at last, is the real Santa Fe of the traveler's 
anticipation; a straggling aggregation of low adobe 
huts divided by narro v winding lanes, where in the 
sharply defined shadows leathern- faced old men and 
women sit in vacuous idleness and burros loaded 
with firewood or garden-truck pass to and fro; and 
in small groups of chattering women one catches an 
occasional glimpse of bright interrogating eyes and a 
saucy handsome face, in spite of the closely drawn 
tapelo. If now some sturdy figure in clanking armor 
should obligingly pass along, you would have an exact 
picture of the place as it appeared two centuries and 
24 



'F'*^" 



% 'Mm 



a half ago. Nothing but that figure has departed 
from the scene, and substantially nothing new has 
entered in. It does not change. The hurrying ac- 
tivities and transitions of the outer world, from 
which it is separated by only a narrow arroyo^ count 
for nothing here. One questions if the outline of a 
shadow has altered for generations. Ths Old House, 
where Coronado is said to have lodged in 1540, and 
the Church of San Miguel, erected soon after, sacked 
in 1680, and rehabilitated in 1710, are not distin- 
guishable from their surroundings by any air of 
superior age. All is old, a petrifaction of medieval 
human life done in adobe. 




More than a score of these many-storied, many- 
chambered communal homes are scattered over the 
Territory, three of the most important of which may 
be mentioned as lying adjacent to the present route: 
Isleta, Laguna, and Acoma. Isleta and Laguna 
are within a stone's-throw of the railroad, ten miles 
and sixty-six miles, respectively, beyond Albuquerque, 
and Acoma is reached from either Laguna or Cubero 
by a drive of a dozen miles. The aboriginal inhabit- 
ants of the pueblos, an intelligent, complex, indus- 
trious and independent race, are anomalous among 
North American natives. They are housed to-day 
in the selfsame structures in which their forebears 
were discovered, and in three and a half centuries of 
contact with Europeans their manner of life has not 
materially changed. The Indian tribes that roamed 
over mountain and plain have become wards of the 
Government, debased and denuded of whatever of 
dignity they once possessed, ascribe what cause you 
will for their present condition. But the Pueblo In- 
dian has absolutely maintained the integrity of his 
individuality, self-respecting and self-sufficient. He 
25 





accepted the form of religion professed by his Span- 
ish conquerors, but without abandoning his own; and 
that is practically the only concession his persistent 
conservatism has ever made to external influence. 

Laborious efforts have been made to penetrate the 
reserve Avith which the involved inner life of this 
strange child of the desert is guarded, but it lies like 
a vast dark continent behind a dimly visible shore, 
and he dwells within the shadowy rim of a night that 
yields no ray to tell of his origin. He is a true pa- 
gan, swathed in seemingly dense clouds of supersti- 
tion, rich in fanciful legend, and profoundly cere- 
monious in religion. His gods are innumerable. 
Not even the ancient Greeks possessed a more popu- 
lous Olympus. On that austere yet familiar height 
gods of peace and of war, of the chase, of bountiful 
harvest and of famine, of sun and rain and snow, el- 
bow a thousand others for standing-room. The trail 
of the serpent has crossed his history, too, and he 
frets his pottery with an imitation of its scales, and 
gives the rattlesnake a prominent place among his 
deities. Unmistakably a pagan; yet the purity and 
well-being of his communities will bear favorable 
comparison with those of the enlightened world. He 
is brave, honest, and enterprising within the fixed 
limits of his little spheie; his wife is virtuous, his 
children are docile. And were the whole earth swept 
bare of every living thing, save for a few leagues 
surrounding his tribal home, his life would show no 
manner of disturbance. I'robably he might never 
hear of so unimportant an event. He would still al- 
ternately labor and relax in festive games, still rever- 
ence his gods and rear his children to a life of indus- 
try and content, so anomalous is he, so firmly estab- 
ished in an absolute independence. 

Pueblo architecture possesses nothing of the elabo- 
rate ornamentation found in the Aztec ruins, in Mex- 
26 




ico. The house is severely plain. It is sometimes 
seven stories in height and contains over a thousand 
rooms. In some instances it is built of adobe — 







blocks of mud mixed with straw and dried in the 
sun — and in others of stone covered with mud ce- 
ment. The entrance is by means of a ladder, and 
when that is pulled up the latch-string is considered 
withdrawn. 

The pueblo of pueblos is Acoma, a city without 
a peer. It is built upon the summit of a table-rock 
with overhanging eroded sides, 350 feet above the 
plain, which is 7,000 feet above the sea. Anciently, 
according to the traditions of the Queres, it stood 
upon the crest of the superb Haunted Mesa, three 
miles away, and some 300 feet higher, but its only 
approach was one day destroyed by the falling of a 
cliff, and three unhappy women who chanced to be 
the only occupants— the remainder of the population 
being at work in the fields below — died of starvation, 
in view of the homeless hundreds of their people who 
for many days surrounded the unscalable mesa with 
upturned agonized faces. The present Acoma is 
the one discovered by the Spaniards; the original 
pueblo on the Mesa Encantada being even then an 
28 




ancient tradition. It is i,ooo feet in length and 40 
feet high, and there is besides a church of enormous 
proportions. Until lately it was reached only by a 
precipitous stairway in the rock, up which the inhab- 
itants carried upon their backs every par.icle of the 
materials of which the village is constructed, 'llie 
graveyard consumed forty years in building, by rea- 
son of the necessity of bringing earth from the plain 
below; and the church must have cost the labor of 
many generations, for its walls are 60 feet high and 
10 feet thick, and it has timbers 40 feet long and 14 
inches square. 

The Acomas welcomed the soldiers of Coronado 
with deference, ascribing to them celestial origin. 
Subsequently, upon learning the distinctly human 
character of the Spaniards, they professed allegiance, 
but afterward wantonly slew a dozen of Zaldivar's 
men. By way of reprisal Zaldivar headed three-score 
soldiers and undertook to carry the sky-citadel by as- 
sault. The incident has no parallel in American his- 
tory short of the memorable and similar exploit of Cor- 
tez on the great Aztec Pyramid. After a three days' 
hand-to-hand struggle the Spaniards stood victors up- 
on that seemingly impregnable fortress and received 
the submission of the Queres, who for three-quarters 
of a century thereafter remained tractable. In that 
interval the priest came to Acoma and held fooling 
for fifty years, until the bloody uprising of 1680 oc- 
curred, in which priest, soldier and settler were mas- 
29 






sacred or driven from the land and every vestige of 
their occupation was extirpated. After the resubjec- 
tion of the natives by Diego de Vargas the present 
church was constructed, and the Pueblos have not 
since rebelled against the contiguity of the white 
man. 

PENITENTES. 

All the numerous Mexican communities in the Ter- 
ritory contain representatives of this order, which is 
peculiar by reason of the self-flagellations inflicted 
by its members in their excess of pietistic zeal. Un- 
like their ilk of India, they do not practice self tort- 
ure for long periods, but only upon a certain day in 
each year. Then, stripped to the waist, these poor 
zealots go chanting a dolorous strain and beating 
themselves unsparingly upon the back with the sharp- 
spined cactus, or soap-weed, until they are a revolt- 
ing sight to look upon. Often they sink from the 
exhaustion 'of long-sustained suffering and loss of 
blood. Among the Penitential ceremonies is the 
bearing a huge cross of heavy timber for long dis- 
tances, amid the exhorting cries of onlookers. The 
one who is adjudged to have punished himself most 
severely is chosen chief of the performance for the 
following year; and the honor does not want for 
aspirants. 

Attempts have been made to abolish this annual 
demonstration, but without avail. 
30 




III. 




ARIZONA. 

]HE portion to be traversed is a land of 
prodigious mountain-terraces, extensive 
plateaus, profound canons, and flat arid 
plains, dotted with gardens of fruits and 
flowers, patched with vast tracts of pine timber and 
veined with precious stones and metals, alternating 
with desolate beds of lava, bald mountainous cones 
of black and red volcanic cinder, grass-carpeted 
parks, uncouth vegetable growths of the desert, and 
bleak rock-spires, above all which white peaks gleam 
radiantly in almost perpetual sunlight. The long- 
time residents of this region are unable to shake off 
its charm, even when no longer compelled by any 
other consideration to remain. Its frequent wide 
stretches of rugged horizon exert a fascination no 
less powerful than that of arduous mountain-fast- 
nesses or the secret shadows of the dense forest. 
There is the same dignity of Nature, the same mys- 
tery, potent even upon those who can least define its 
thrall. Miners confess to it, and herdsmen. To 
the traveler it will appear a novel environment for 
contemporaneous American life, this land of sage 
and mesquite, of frowning volcanic piles, shadowed 
canons, lofty mesas and painted buttes. . It seems 
fitter for some cyclopean race, for the pterodactyl 
and the behemoth. Its cliffs are flung in broad sin- 
uous lines that approach and recede from the way, 
31 




w^ai^!^.^MLSr ^'', 



their contour incessantly shifting in the similitude of 
caverns, corridors, pyramids, monuments, and a thou- 
sand other forms so full of structural idea they seem 
to be the unfinished work of some giant architect 
who had planned more than he could execute. 

The altitude is practically the same as that of the 
route through New Mexico, undulating between 
5,000 and 7,000 feet above sea- level, until on the 
western border the high plateaus break rapidly down 
to an elevation of less than 500 feet at the valley of 
a broad and capricious stream that flows through al- 
ternate stretches of rich alluvial meadow arw:l barren 
rock-spires — obelisks rising against the sky. This 
stream is the Colorado River, wayward, strenuous, 
and possessed of creative imagination and terrific 
energies when the mood is on. It chiseled the 
Grand Cafion, far to the north and east, and now 
complacently saunters oceanward. Despite its quiet 
air, not long ago and at no small distance toward 




the south, it conceived the whim to make a Salton 

Sea, and the affair was a national sensation for many 

months. The great cantilever bridge that spans it 

32 



here was made necessary by the restless spirit of the 
intractable stream. Only a short time ago the cross- 
ing Avas by means of a huge pile bridge a few miles 
toward the north; but the river shifted its channel 
so frequently it was thought desirable to build a 
new bridge down here among the enduring obelisks 
which are known as The Needles, It is a pictur- 
esque spot, full of color, and the air has a pure 
transparency that lends depth and distance to the 
view, such as the bird knows in its flight. The 
Needles form the head of the gorgeously beautiful 
Mojave Canon, hidden from view. The Colorado 
is an inveterate lover of a chaotic channel. It is 
its genitts to create works of art on a scale to awe 
the spirit of cataclysm itself. It is a true Helles- 
pont, issuing from Cimmerian gloom to loiter among 
sunny fields, which it periodically waters with a fer- 
tilizing flood; and while you follow its gentle sweep 
it breaks into sudden uproar and hews a further patli 
of desolation and sublimity. One who does not 
know the canons of the Colorado has never experi- 
enced the full exaltation of those impersonal emo- 
tions to which the Arts are addressed. There only 
are audience-halls fit for the tragedies of /Eschylus, 
for Dante and the Sagas. 

The known history of Arizona begins with the 
same Mark of Nice whom we have already accred- 
ited as the discoverer of New Mexico, of which this 
Territory was long a part; and here, as well, he was 
followed by Coronado and the missionaries. This 
is the true home of the Apache, whose unsparing 
warfare repeatedly destroyed the work of early 
Spanish civilization and won the land back for a 
time to heathenesse. Its complete acquisition by 
the United States dates from 1853, and in the early 
days of the Civil War it was again devastated. After 
its reoccupation by California troops in 1862, set- 
33 






tiers began to penetrate its northern portion. Nearly 
twenty years later the first railroad spanned its bound- 
aries, and then finally it became a tenable home 
for t^c Saxon, although the well-remembered out- 
'^^H-^tK break of Geronimo occurred only six years ago. To- 
day the war-thirsty Apaches are widely scattered 
among distant reservations, and with them has de- 
paifted the last existing element of disturbance. But 
Arizona will never lose its peculiar atmosphere of 
extreme antiquity, for in addition to those over- 
whelming chasms that have lain unchanged since 
tke infancy of the world, it contains within its bor- 
ders the ruins of once populous cities, maintained by 
an enormous irrigation system which our modern 
science has not yet attempted to rival; whose history 
was not written upon any lasting scroll; whose peo- 
ples are classed among the undecipherable antiqui- 
ties of our continent, their deeds unsung, their he- 
rocs unchronicled and unknown. 

Yet, if you have a chord for the heroic, hardly 
shall you find another land so invigorating as this of 
Arizona. It stiffens the mental fiber like a whiff of 
the north wind. It stirs in the blood dim echoes of 
days when achievement lay in the might of the indi- 
vidual arm; when sword met targe in exhilarating 
struggles for supremacy. The super-refinement of 
cities dissipates here. There is a tonic breeze that 
blows toward simple relations and a lusty selfhood. 



CHALCEDONY PARK, 

The town of Holbrook stands upon a gray tree- 
dotted pla4n by the side of the Little Colorado 
River, whieh at this point is a shallow, sluggish 
flow, lost to sight here and there in the depths of 
thirsty sands. This is the most convenient point 
from which to visit the Chalcedony Park (which lies 
at a distance of about twenty miles toward the 
34 




\ 



south), by icas(ju of hotel accommodations and facil- 
ities for local transportation. One-half the distance 
can be saved by quitting the train between Billings 
and Carrizo, at mile-post 233, and walking a mile to 
Ilanna's Ranch, where a team can be procured; but 
this way of access is hardly practicable for the 
transcontinental traveler incumbered with baggage. 
The park, so called, is a tract of 2,000 acres thickly 
strewn with chips, fragments, and even whole trunks, 
of trees; the detritus of some prehistoric flood, 
transformed by the sybaritic chemistry of nature 
into chalcedony, topaz, onyx, carnelian, agate and 
amethyst. It is a storehouse of precious gems, 
measurable by no smaller phrase than millions of 
tons; a confusion of splinters, twigs, limbs, seg- 
ments and logs, every fragment of which would 
adorn the collector's cabinet, and, polished by the 
lapidary, would embellish a crown. vSome of these 
prostrate trees of stone are 150 feet in length and 
10 feet in diameter, although generally broken into 
sections by a clean transverse cleavage. One of 
these huge trunks, its integrity still spared by time 
and the hammer of the scientist, spans a canon 
sixty feet wide; a bridge of jasper and agate, over- 
hanging a tree-fringed pool; the realization of a 
seer's rhapsody, squandered upon a desert far from 
the habitations of man. 




MOQUIS. 

The reservation containing the Moqui villages — 
fair white castles cresting the cliffs of a desert 
waste — lies to the north of Winslow, farther away 
than the average tourist will attempt to journey; but 
the Moquis themselves may be seen about the sta- 
tion named. Not uncomely, clad in picturesque 
costume, and representative of the ever-interesting 
Pueblo life, they merit more than passing mention. 
35 




1: 





y 



W 



With them alone survives the revolting but fascinat- 
ing spectacle of the snake-dance, that once was 
common to all the Pueblo peoples. Upon the ques- 
tion of the virulency of the rattlesnake's bite opin- 
ions are diverse. There are those who claim that 
there is positively no antidote for the venom of a 
healthy full-grown reptile of that species, yet old 
ry^^]> ranchmen will tell you stories of many a prompt 
'^ <^V recovery from snake-bite by the virtue of a mysteri- 
VuMVir] ]S' *^"^ weed plucked by Indian or Mexican; and plain 
:^f^^)Hi) whisky has its stanch advocates in this as in other 
vicissitudes of human life. It is, however, certain 
that the bite of crotalus is often fatal , and is universally 
dreaded except by the Moquis in the season of their 
dance, at which time they handle their reptile deity 
with the most audacious familiarity and without dan- 
ger. The secret of the mysterious antidote used by 
them is supposed to be known to only three of the 
tribe, namely, the high priest, the neophyte who is in 
training to inherit that office, and the eldest woman. 
In the event of the death of any one of these three 
it is imparted to a successor, and under any other 
circumstances its betrayal is punishable by death. 
Every year, three days before the great day of the 
ceremony, the intending participants enter upon a 
strict fast, which is not broken until the dance has 
been concluded. In the intervening period the 
secret decoction is freely administered by the venera- 
ble medicine-man, and the dancers employ their leis- 
ure in capturing rattlesnakes in the desert. Several 
hundred of the hideous reptiles are thus collected 
and imprisoned in a little corral. Upon the morning 
of the fourth day, at the appointed hour, the dancers 
boldly enter the corral, and seizing a snake in each 
hand rush out to join in the mystic savage rite. 
Unimpeachable authority vouches for the fact that 
rattlesnakes are not unfanged or in anywise 
36 





MOQUI HAIRDRESSER. 
37 




deprived of the exercise of their deadly function. 
On the contrary, the dancers are repeatedly bitten as 
they twine the reptiles around their necks and arms, 
and hold them in their mouths by the middle and 
swing them to and fro. But the potency of the 
antidote is such that only a slight irritation or small 
local inflammation ensues, and the Moquis give no 
more serious thought to the venomous caresses of 
their squirming captives than they would give to the 
sting of a gnat. At the conclusion of the dance the 
snakes are reverently restored to freedom, having 




been prevailed upon to use their influence with the 
beneficent powers for the space of a whole year in 
behalf of their dusky worshipers. 



CANON DIABLO. 

This, the Devil Canon, is a profound gash in 
the plateau, some 225 feet deep, 550 feet wide and 
many miles long. It has the appearance of a vol- 
canic rent in the earth's crust, wedge-shaped, and 
terraced in bare dun rock down to the thread of a 
stream that trickles through the notch. It is one of 
those inconsequent things which Arizona is fond of 
displaying. For many miles you are bowled over 
a perfectly level plain, and without any preparation 
whatever, save only to slacken its pace, the train 
38 




crosses the chasm by a spider-web bridge and then 
speeds again over the selfsame placid expanse. In 
the darkness of night one might unsuspectingly step 
off into its void, it is so entirely unlooked-for. Yet, 
remarkable as is the Canon Diablo, in comparison 
with those grand gorges hereafter to be mentioned 
it is worth little better than an idle glance through 
the car-window in passing. 



FLAGSTAFF. 

Gateway to most remarkable ancient ruins, to one 
of the most practicable and delightful of our great 
mountains, and to the famous (irand Canon of the 
Colorado River, Flagstaff is itself piotorial in char- 
acter and rich in interest. It stands upon a clearing 
in an extensive pine forest that here covers the pla- 
teau and clothes the mountains nearly to their peaks; 
although the word park better describes this sunlit, 
grass- carpeted expanse of widely set towering pines, 
where cattle graze and the horseman may gallop 
at will. Couched at the foot of a noble mountain 
that doffs its cap of snow for only a few weeks of the 
year, and environed by vast resources of material 
wealth in addition to its aggregation of spectacalar 
39 






an J archaeological features, its fame has already 
spread widely over the world, and will increase with 
time. Space can here be given to only its three most 
celebrated possessions, but the visitor cannot hope 
to exhaust the number and variety of its attractions. 
There are woodland retreats where sculptured rocks 
tower many hundred feet above the still surface of 
pools; box canons where myriads of trout leap from 
the waters of the stream that flows through depths 
of shadow; thickets where the deer browses; plains 
where the antelope still courses, and rocky slopes 
where the big-horn still clambers and the mountain- 
lion dozes in the sun. 

SAN FRANCISCO MOUNTAIN. 

Here, as in many other parts of the West, the act- 
ual height of a mountain is greater than is apparent 
to the eye. The ascent begins at a point consider- 
ably above where the Eastern mountain-climber leaves 
off, for the reason that the whole region is itself 
a prodigious mountain, hundreds of thousands of 
square miles in area, of which the projecting peaks 
are but exalted lookouts. The four summits of 
San Francisco Mountain are elevated nearly 13,000 
feet above the sea, and only 6,000 feet above the town 
of Flagstaff. It follows that more than half the actual 
ascent has been made without any effort by the trav- 
eler, and the same result is attained as if he had climbed 
a sheer height of 13,000 feet upon the rim of the sea. 
There is the same rarefaction of air, the same wide 
range over an empire that lies flat beneath the eye, 
limited only by the interposition of other mountains, 
the spherical contour of the earth, atmospheric haze, 
or the power of vision itself. 

The apex of Humphrey's Peak, the only summit 
of this mountain which is practicable for the tourist, 
is little more than ten miles from Flagstaff, and an 
40 



excellent carriage-road covers fully seven miles of 
that distance. From the end of that road a com- 
fortable bridle-path leads to within a few feet of the 
topmost crag. The entire trip may be made on 
horseback if desired, and one who is accustomed to 
the saddle will find it a preferable experience, for 
then short cuts are taken through the timber, and 
there is so much the more of freedom and the charm 
of an untrammeled forest. The road crosses a short 
stretch of clearing and then enters the magnificent 
pine park, rising at an easy grade and offering fre- 
quent backward glimpses. The strained, conscious 
severity of the Rocky Mountain giants is wanting 
here. It is a mountain without egotism, breathing 
gentlest dignity and frankly fond of its robe of verd- 
ure. Birdsiflit and carol in its treetops, and squir- 
rels play. Grass and fern do not fear to make soft- 
cushioned banks to allure the visitor, flowers riot in 
their season, and the aspens have whole hillsides to 
themselves; soft, twinkling bowers of delicate green, 
dells where one could wish to lie and dream through 
long summer hours. The bridle-path begins, with 
the conventional zigzag of mountain-trails, at the 
foot of a steep grass-grown terrace that lies in full 
view of the spreading panorama below. Above that 
sunny girdle the trail winds through a more typical 
mountain-forest, where dead stalks of pine and fir 
are plentifully sprinkled among the living, and ugly 
swaths show where the avalanche has passed. Above 
this, for the remaining few hundred feet, the peaks 
stand bare — stern, swart crags that brook no mantle 
except the snows, encompassed by a quiet which only 
the wind redeems from everlasting silence. 

The outlook from Humphrey's Peak is one of the 
noblest of mountain-views. It commands a recog- 
nizable territory of not less than seventy-five thou- 
sand square miles, with vague shadowy contours be- 
41 





yond the circle of definite vision. Categorically, as 
pointed out by the guide, the main features of the 
landscape are as follows: Directly north, the far- 
1 ther wall of the Grand Canon, at the Bright Angel 
Amphitheater, fifty miles away; and topping that, the 
Buckskin Mountains of the Kaibab Plateau, thirty 
or forty miles farther distant. To the right, the Na- 
vajo Mountains, near the Colorado State line, 200 
miles. In the northeast, the wonderful Painted Des- 
ert, tinted with rainbow-hues, and the Navajo Res- 
ervation. Below that, the Moqui buttes and villages. 
Toward the east, the broad plateau and desert as far 
as the divide near Navajo Springs, 130 miles east 
from Flagstaff by the railroad. In the southeast, the 
White Mountains, more than 200 miles. In the 
south, successively, the Mogollon Plateau, a group of 
a dozen lakes — unlooked-for sight in the arid lands 
— Baker's Butte, the Four Peaks, and the Supersti- 
tion Mountains near Phoenix, the last named 160 
miles distant. In the southwest, the Bradshaw 
Mountains, 140 miles; Granite Mountain, at Pres- 
cott, 100 miles, and the Juniper Range, 150 miles. 
The horizon directly west is vague and doubtful, 
but is believed to lie- near the California line. In the 
northwest a distant range is seen, north of the Colo- 
rado River and east of the Nevada line, perhaps the 
Sheavwits or the Hurricane Mountains. Among 
the less remote objects are the Coconino forest and 
basin on the north; on the east the Little Colorado, 
traceable by its fringe of cottonwoods, beds of lava 
flung like the shadow of a cloud or the trail of a 
conflagration, and Sunset and Peachblow craters, 
black cones of cinder capped with red scoria; on the 
south and southwest Oak Creek Canon, the Jerome 
smelters, and the rugged pictorial breakdown of the 
Verde, and, under foot. Flagstaff; and on the west 
42 







the peaks of Bill Williams, Sitgreaves, and Ken- 
dricks, neighborly near. 

Yet, in spite of the grandeur of such a scene, San 
Francisco Mountain itself soon gains and monopo- 
lizes the attention. It has slopes that bend in a 
single sweeping curve to depths which the brain 
reels to contemplate, down which a loosened stone 
will spin until the eye can no longer distinguish its 
course; and there are huge folds and precipices and 
abysses of which no hint was given in the ascent. 
There is, too, a small glacier. Perhaps its most at- 
tractive single feature is a profound bowl-shaped 
cavity between Humphrey and Agassiz peaks, over- 
hung by strangely sculptured cliffs that have the ap- 
pearance of ruined castle-walls perforated with rude 
doorways, windows, and loopholes. It is called The 
Crater, and is almost completely boxed in by steep 
but uniform slopes of volcanic sand, in descending 
which a horse sinks to his fetlocks. On the side 
toward the north it breaks down into a canon lead- 
ing off to the plain and set with tree, grass, fern and 
flower. Its axis is marked by two parallel lines of 
bare bowlders of great size, that seem to have been 
thrown up from the underlying rock by some prodig- 
ious ebullition of internal forces. 

This mountain has always been regarded as a 
mass of lava heaped upon the plain around volcanic 
vents. Recent prospectors now claim it to be com- 
posed of gray and red granite and pure white lime- 
stone, diked with porphyry, and capped with meta- 
morphosed rocks and lava. Many mining-claims 
have within a short time been located upon it, and 
the outcroppings are reported to contain free milling- 
gold ore of low grade. 

The round trip to the peak is customarily made in 
a day, but arrangements may be made to remain 
upon the mountain over night if determined upon in 
43 




^^^ 



advance, and such a plan is recommended to those 
who ha- e never seen the glories of sunset and sunrise 
from a mountain-height. Among the mountains of 
Amer.ca there is hardly another that at the cost of so 
little hardship yields so rich a reward. 




GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO. 

The series of tremendous chasms which form the 
channel of the Colorado River in its course through 
Northern Arizona reach their culmination in a cha- 
otic gorge 217 miles long, from g to 13 miles wide, 
and, midway, more than 6,600 feet below the level 
of the plateau. Standing upon the brink of that 
plateau, at the point of the canon's greatest width 
and depth, the beholder is confronted by a scene 
whose majesty and beauty are well-nigh unbearable, 
Snatc' in a single glance from every accustomed 
anchorage of human experience, tfee stoutest heart 
here quavers, the senses cower. It is the only known 
spot which one need not fear approaching with an- 
ticipations too exalted. It is a new world, compel- 
44 



ling the tribute of sensations whose intensity exceeds 
the famiUar signification of words. If you say of 
Niagara's gorge that it is profound, what shall you 
say of the Colorado's chasm that yawns beneath your 
feet to a depth nearly fifty times greater? If you 
have looked down from the height of the Eififel tower 
and calted it vertiginous, what shall you say when 
you are brought to the verge of a gulf at points of 
which you may drop a plummet five tim^s as far? 
And when you face, not a mere narrow frowning 
gash of extraordinary depth, but a broad underworld 
that reaches to the uttermost horizon and seems as 
vast as the earth itself; studded with innumerable 
pyramidal mountains of massive bulk hewn from 
gaudiest rock-strata, that barely lift the cones and 
turrets of their crests to the level of the eye; divided 
by purple voids; banded in vivid colors of transpar- 
ent brilliancy that are harmonized by atmosphere 
and refraction to a marvelous delicacy ; controlled 
by a unity of idea that redeems the whole from the 
menace of overwhelming chaos — then the pen halts 
in undertaking its description. 

Some attempt, however, has been made in ''The 
Grand Canon of the Colorado,'" to which the reader 
who can not avail of the magnificent volumes of 
Powell and Button, and desires a more intimate 
knowledge than can be derived from the graceful 
and eloquent pages devoted to the subject in Warn- 
er's "Our Ital}," is referred. 

The Grand Canon is sixty-five miles distant from 
Flagstaff, b) a nearly level road, through a region 
that presents in turn nearly all the characteristic 
features of Arizona. Except in the winter months, 
it which time the journey can be undertaken only 
when weather and roads are favorable, a tri-weekly 
stage makes the trip to the canon in about twelve 
' li* ^'^'^IfLSM houi^, including stop for dinner midway. Passengers 




quit the stage upon the very rim of the canon, at the 
most impressive point, and so long; as they may 
choose to remain are provided with comfortable 
lodgings and excellent meals. 

CLIFF AND CAVE DWELLINGS. 

This region abounds in scattered ruins of the 
dwellings of a prehistoric people. 1'he most impor- 
tant yet discovered lie within a radius of eight miles 
from Flagstaff, and are easily accessible. 

On the southeast, Walnut Canon breaks the pla- 
teau for a distance of several miles, its walls deeply 
eroded in horizontal parallel lines. In these nat- 
ural recesses, floored and roofed by the more endur- 
ing strata, the cliff-dwellings are found in great 
number, walled up on the front and sides with rock 
fragments and cement, and partitioned into com- 
partments. Some have fallen into decay, only por- 
tions of their walls remaining, and but a narrow 
shelf of the once broad floor of solid rock left to evi- 
dence their extreme antiquity. Others are almost 
wholly intact, having stubbornly resisted the weath- 
ering of time. Nothing but fragments of pottery 
now remain of the many quaint implements and 
trinkets that characterized these dwellings at the 
time of their discovery and have since been exhumed 
by scientist and collector. At least, nothing of value 
is supposed to remain about those that are commonly 
visited. Many others, more difficult to explore, may 
yet yield a store of archaeological treasure. 

Fixed like swallows' nests upon the face of a preci- 
pice, approachable from above or below only by de- 
liberate and cautious climbing, these dwellings have 
the appearance of fortified retreats i ather than habit- 
ual abodes. That there was a time, in the remote 
past, when warlike peoples of mysterious origin 
passed southward over this plateau is generally cred- 
47 





ited. And the existence of the cUff-dwellings is 
ascribed to the exigencies of that dark period, when 
the inhabitants of the plateau, unable to cope with 
the superior energy, intelligence and numbers of the 
descending hordes, devised theSfC unassailable re- 
treats. All their quaintness and antiquity cannot 
conceal the deep pathos of their being, for tragedy 
is written all over these poor hovels hung between 
earth and sky. Their builders hold no smallest niche 
in recorded history. Their aspirations, their strug- 
gles and their fate are all unwritten, save on these 
crumbling stones, which are their sole monument and 
meager epitaph. Here once they dwelt. They left 
no other print on Time. 

At an equal distance to the north of Flagstaff, 
among the cinder-buried cones, is one whose sum- 
mit commands a wide-sweeping view of the plain. 
Upon its apex, in the innumerable spout-holes that 
were the outlet of ancient eruptions, are the cave- 
dwellings, around many of which rude stone-walls 
still stand. The story of these habitations is like- 
wise wholly conjectural. They may have been con- 
temporary with the cliff-dwellings. That they were 
long inhabited is clearly apparent. Fragments of 
shattered pottery lie on every hand. 

CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN ARIZONA. 

From Ash Fork, west of Flagstaff, the Santa Fe, 
Prescott & Phoenix Railroad extends southward over 
an elevated region commanding wide views, through 
canons and valleys of great beauty, and past some 
of the largest copper-mines in the United States, for 
sixty miles, to Prescott. This city is to the northern 
half of Arizona what Denver is to the State of Colo- 
rado: a distributing and shipping point for a large 
surrounding country in which mining is the greatest 
activity, with horticultural interests rapidly develop- 
ing in pace with facilities for irrigation. 
48 




In the winter of 1893 this railroad will have 
reached Phoenix, the capital, which is located in the 
Salt River Valley, 140 miles beyond Prescott — a mag- 
nificent level floor, walled in by mountains, and con- 
taining a million acres of irrigable lands. Here, in 
a climate where snow is unknown, nearly every Va- 
riety of fruit and nut, except those that are absolutely 
restricted to the tropics, is grown in extraordinary 
profusion, in addition to the ordinary cereals and 
vegetables of the North Temperate Zqne. The list is 
long, and includes grapes, quinces, apricots, peaches, 
nectarines, pears, plums, prunes, pomegranates, 
loquats, guavas, Japanese persimmons, figs, oranges, 
lemons, olives, dates, peanuts, almonds and pecans. 
The neighborhood of Prescott yields vast quantities 
of copper, and not a little gold. There are, among 
other famous deposits, the United Verde copper-mines 
and the Congress and Rich Hill gold-mines; the last- 
named situated upon an isolated peak, where in the 
early days free gold was literally whittled from the 
rock with knives and chisels. Nowhere has nature 
been more lavish of her treasures, and while yet the 
store of precious metal has barely been explored, the 
smaller alluvial valleys, and that vast one around 
Phoenix, have become widely known for the produc- 
tion of multifarious fruits which ripen several weeks 
in advance of those of California. 

Hitherto the only facile communication between 
the Salt River Valley and the outside world has been 
by a roundabout way through the South. Here- 
after there will be a direct thoroughfare by way of 
Ash Fork, both for tourists and for exportation of 
the phenomenal products of the region. 
49 







'^f^ 



IV. 
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. 





FEW miles beyond the Colorado River 
crossing at The Needles is the railroad 
station of that name, where the remnant 
of the once powerful and warlike Mojave 
tribe, now become beggarly hangers-on to civiliza- 
tion, love to congregate and offer inferior wares iii 
the shape of bows and arrows and pottery trinkets to 
travelers in exchange for coin. Their hovels are 
scattered along the wayside, and the eager congre- 
gation of women peddlers, some with naked babies 
sitting stoically astride their hips, and all dubiously 
picturesque in paint and rags, is sufficiently divert- 
ing. The men attain gigantic stature, and are famed 
for their speed and bottom as runners; but their abil- 
ity might be fairly taxed by the tourist of average ca- 
pacity who for any cause felt himself in danger of 
being compelled to share their abode or mingle inti- 
mately with them. A sound-heeled Achilles would 
fair behind in pursuit of the fleer from such a sorry 
fate. 

But this is California, the much-lauded land of fruit 
and flower and sunny clime, of mountain and shore 
and sea-girt isle; land of paradoxes, where winter is the 
season of bloom and fruitage and summer is nature's 
time of slumbc". The traveler enters it for the first 
time with a vivid preconception of its splendors. 
50 



By way of introduction you are borne across the 
most sterile portion of the most liopeless waste in 
America, whose monotony intercepts every approach 
to California except that roundabout one by way of 
the sea. But here you are screened by night, and 
\Vill know nothing of its terrors except as they are 
told you. On every hand lies a drear stretch of sand 
and alkali, a Nubian desert unmarked by a single hu- 
man habitation outside the lonely path of the loco- 
motive; where not even the cry of a wolf breaks the 
grim silence of desolation. Through this the train 
hastens to a more elevated country, arid still, but re- 
lieved by rugged rocks, the esthetic gnarled trunks 
and bolls of the yucca and occasional growths of de- 
ciduous trees. You enter the Cajon Pass. 

Did not the journey include a return through Col- 
orado, where much must be said of the grandeur of 
distinctive mountain scenery, Cajon Pass would bear 
extended mention. It is the loveHest imaginable 
scene, a gently billowing mountain-flank densely set 
with thickets of manzanita, through whose glossy 
green foliage and red stems the pale earth gleams, 
rising here and there in graceful dunes of white un- 
fiecked by grass or shrub, and overhung by parallel 
terraced ridges of the San Bernardino Mountains, 
that pale in turn to a topmost height far in the blue 
Italian sky. Entirely wanting in the austerity that 
characterizes the grander mountains of loftier alti- 
tudes, it takes you from the keeping of plateau and 
desert and by seductive windings leads you down to 
the garden of California. Typical scenes at once ap- 
pear. On either hand are seen orchards, of the peach, 
apricot, prune, olive, fig, almond, walnut, and that 
always eagerly anticipated one of the orange. 

You will not, however, find this whole land a jungle 
of orange and palm trees, parted only by thick banks 
of flowers. The world is wide, even in California, or 
51 




one might better say particularly in California, where 
over an area averaging 150 miles wide and 1,000 
miles long is scattered a population no greater than 
that of the city of Chicago. It is true that at River- 
side orange-trees do grow through the station plat- 
form, and at many places along your route you may 
almost pluck the golden fruit from the car-window in 
passing; but the celebrated products of California lie 
in restricted areas of cultivation, which you are ex- 
pected to visit; and herein lies much of the Calif or- 
nian's pride, that there still remains so much of op- 
portunity for all. There is everything in California 
that has been credited to it, but what proves not un- 
commonly a surprise is the relatively small area of 
improved land and the consequent frequency of un- 
fructed intervals. Only a moment's reflection is need- 
ed to perceive that the case could not be otherwise. 
As for flowers, even here they are not eternal, except 
in the thousands of watered gardens. In the dry 
summer season the hills turn brown and sleep. Only 
when the winter rains have slaked the parched earth 
do the grass and flowers awake, and then for a few 
months there is a enough of bloom and fragrance to 
satisfy the most exuberant fancy. 

Now past pretty horticultural communities, flanked 
by the Sierra Madre, the way leads quickly from San 
Bernardino to Pasadena and Los Angeles. 

From the last-named city you pass through a fruit- 
ful region, and within a stone's-throw of the impres- 
sive mission-ruins of Capistrano, to a shore where 
the long waves of the Pacific break upon gleaming 
white sands and the air is of the sea. Blue as the 
sky is the Pacific, paling in the shallows toward land, 
and flecked with bright or somber cloud-reflections 
and smurring ripples of the breeze. It is not only 
the westerly bound of the North American Continent, 
it is the South Seas of old adventure, where many a 
52 




hulk of once treasure-laden galleons lies fathoms deep 
among the queer denizens di the sea who repeat wild 
legends of naughty buccaneers. There is challenge 
to the imagination in the very tracklessness of the 
sea. On the wrinkled face of earth you may read 
earth's story. She has laid things to heart. She 
broods on memories. But the sea denies the past; it 
is as heedless of events that were as the air is of the 
path where yesterday a butterfly was winging. Its 
incontinent expanse is alluring to the fancy, and 
this sunset sea even more than the tempestuous ocean 
that beats upon our eastern shores, for it is so lately 
become our possession it seems still a foreign thing, 
strewn with almost as many wrecks of Spanish hopes 
as of galleons; and into its broad bosom the sun 
sinks to rise upon quaint antipodean peoples, beyond 
a thousand mysterious inhabited islands in the swirls 
of the equatorial currents. 

Next, swinging inland to find the pass of the last 
intervening hills, you make a final descent to the 
water's edge, and come to San Diego, that dreamy 
city of Mediterranean atmosphere and color, terraced 
along the rim of a sheltered bay of surpassing beau- 
ty. Guarding the mouth of the harbor lies the long 
crescent peninsular of Coronado, the pale faQades of 
whose mammoth hotel flash through tropical vege- 
tation across the blue intervening waters. 




OF CLIMATE. 

Here the sun habitually shines. Near the coast 
flows the broad equable Japanese ocean-current, from 
svhich a tempered breeze sweeps overland every morn- 
ing, every night to return from the cool mountain- 
tops. Between the first of May and the last of Octo- 
ber rain almost never falls. By the end of June the 
earth has evaporated most of its surface-moisture, and 
vegetation unsustained by artificial watering begins 
53 




to languish. The midday temperature now rises, 
but the same breeze swings like a pendulum between 
ocean and mountain, and night and early morning 
are no less invigorating. This is summer, a joyous 
and active season generally misconceived by the tour- 
ist, who not unreasonably visits California in the win- 
ter-time to escape Northern cold and snow, and in- 
fers an unendurable torrid summer from a winter of 
mildness and luxuriance. 

With November the first showers generally begin, 
followed by an occasional heavy downpour, and North 
ern pastures now whiten under falling snow hardly 
faster than do these sere hills turn beryl-green. The 
rainy season is so called not because it is characterized 
by continuous rainfall, but to distinguish it from that 
portion of the year in which rain cannot be looked 
for. Bright days are still the rule, and showery days 
are marked by transcendent beauties of earth and 
sky, fleeting wonders of form and color. Let the 
morning open with a murky zenith, dark tumbled 
cloud -masses dropping shower. As the invisible sun 
mounts, he peeps unexpectedly through a rift to see 
that his world is safe, then vanishes. The sky has 
an unrelenting look. The mountains are obscured. 
Suddenly, far to the left, a rift breaks dazzling white, 
just short of where the rain is falling on the hills in 
a long bending column, and at one side a broad patch 
pales into mottled gray; and below the rift a light mist 
is seen floating on the flank of a mountain that shoots 
into sharp relief against a vapor-wall of slate. At 
the mountain's foot a whole hillside shows in warm 
brown tint, its right edge merged in a low flat cloud 
of silver, born, yon could aver, on the instant, from 
which the truncated base of a second mountain de- 
pends, blue as indigo. The face of earth, washed 
newly, is a patchwork of somber and gaudy trans- 
parent colors: yellows, greens, sepias, grays. One's 
54 




range and clearness of vision are quickly expanded, as 
when a telescope is fitted to the eye. Now begins a 
wonderful shifting of light and shadow ; peeps through 
a curtain that veils unbearable splendors of upper 
sky; gradual dissolutions of cloud into curls and 
twists and splashes, with filling of blue between. 
Again the sun appears, at first with a pale burnished 
light, flashing and fading irresolutely until at length 
it flames out with summer ardor. The clouds break 
into still more curious forms, into pictures and 
images of quaint device, and outside the wide circle 
of brilliant sunlight all the hills are in purple shadow, 
fading into steel-blue, and about their crests cling 
wisps of many-colored fleece. Here and there a dis- 
tant peak is blackly hooded, or gleams subtly behind 
an intervening shower — a thin transparent wash of 
smoky hue. The veil quickly dissipates, and at the 
same instant the peak is robbed of its sunlight by 
billows of vapor that marshal in appalling magnifi- 
cence. Then the rain-mist advances and hides the 
whole from view. A strip of green next flashes on 
the sight, a distant field lighted by the sun, but lying 
unaccountably beneath a cloud of black. Beyond, 
the broad foot of a rainbow winks and disappears. 
Among all the hilltops rain next begins to fall like 
amber smoke, so thin is .the veil that shields them 
from the sun. Then the sun abruptly ceases to 
shine, the whole heavens are overcast, and between 
the fine fast-falling drops the ground gleams wet in 
cool gray light. By noon the sun agaia is shining- 
clear, although in occasional canons there is night 
and deluge, and at the close of a bright afternoon 
the farthest, loftiest peak has a white cloud wreath 
around it, as symmetrical as a smoke-ring breathed 
from the lips of a seiiorita ; and out of the middle of 
it rises the fragment of a rainbow — a cockade on a 
56 





jpiw — - 



Then the sun drops, a 



mist- laureled Matterhorn 
the day is done. 

That is the way it rains in California, and betwer 
such days are unclouded intervals of considerable 
duration. They call this season winter. The tem- 
perature is so finely balanced one does not easily 
decide whether to walk upon the sunny or the shach 
side of the street. It is cool; not cold, not bracing 
in the ordinary sense, but just the proper tempera- 
ture for continuous out-of-door life. June does not 
define it, nor September. It has no synonym. But 
if you cared to add one more to the many unsuccess- 
ful attempts to define it in a phrase, you might term 
it constant delicious weather; to-day, to-morrow, ^ 
and indefinitely in the future, morally certain to be 
very much as you would have it if you were to create 
an air and a sky exactly to suit his or her majesty 
yourself. But even here man is a clothes-wearing 
aninial. There is a coolness pervading the most 
brilliant sunshine. Remembering this, the most ap- 
prehensive person will soon discover that there is no 
menace in the dry, pure and gently invigorating air 
of the Southern California winter. It wins the inva- 
lid to health by enticing him to remain out-of-doors. 
Ranging from warm sea-level to peaks of frigid in- 
clemency, this varied state offers many climatic grada- 
tions, whose contrasts are nearly always in view. In 
winter you may sit upon almost any veranda in South- 
ern California and lift your eyes from the brilliant 
green of ornamental trees and shrubs, from orchards 
where fruits ripen in heavy clusters, and from the 
variegated bloom of gardens, to ragged horizon-lines 
buried deep in snow. There above is a frozen waste, 
an Alpine terror. Here below is summer, shorn of 
summer languor. And between may be found any 
modification that could reasonably be sought, each 
steadfast in its own characteristics. 
57 





The smallest of these communities is great in con- 
tent. Literally couched beneath his own vine and 
fig-tree, plucking from friendly boughs delicious 
fruits, finding in the multifarious products of the 
soil nearly everything needful in domestic economy, 
and free from most of the ills that flesh was thought 
to be heir to, what wonder that the Californian envies 
no man, nor ever looks wistfully over the sierra's 
crest toward the crowded cities and precarious farm- 




ing regions of the East? An uplifting environment 
for a home, truly, fit to breed a race worthy of the 
noblest empire among the States. There is work to 
be done, in the house and the field, but in such an 
air and scene it is as near a transfiguration of labor 
as can well be imagined. Here it is indeed a poor 
boy or girl who has not a pony on which to scamper 
58 



about, or lacks liberty for such enjoyment. And 
every year there comes a period of holiday, an inter- 
val when there is no planting or harvesting to be 
done, no picking or drying or packing of fruit, a 
recuperating spell of nature, when the weather is just 
as glorious as ever, and the mountains and ocean 
beckon seductively to the poet that is in tb.e heart of 
every unharassed man and woman and child. I'hen 
for weeks the canons are dotted with tents, where the 
mountain-torrent foams and spreading sycamores 
are festooned with mistletoe; and the trout of the 
stream and the game of the forest have their solstice 
of woe. Or, on the rim of the sea, thousands of 
merry hearts, both young and old, congregate and 
hold high carnival. When the campers return to 
shop and field it is not by reason of any inclemency 
of weather, but because their term of hoUday4ias ex- 
pired. Then come the tourists, and pale fugitives 
from the buffets of Boreas, to wander happily over 
hillside and shore in a land unvexed by the tyranny 
of the seasons. 

The most seductive of lands, and the most tena- 
cious in its hold upon you. You have done but little, 
and a day has fled; have idled, walked, ridden, sailed 
a little, have seen two or three of the thousand things 
to be seen, and a week, a month, is gone. You 
could grieve that such golden burdenless hours should 
ever go into the past, did they not flow from an in- 
exhaustible fount. For to be out all day in the care- 
less freedom of perfect weather; to ramble over ruins 
of a former occupation; to wander throflgh gardens 
and orchards; to fish, to shoot, to gather flowers 
from the blossoming hillslopes; to explore a hundred 
fascinating retreats of mountain and shore; to lounge 
on the sands by the surf until the sun drops into the 
sea; all this is permitted by the Southern California 
winter. 

59 





6o 



SAN DIEGO AND VICINITY. 

Fringing a bay that for a dozen miles glows like a 
golden mirror below its purple rim, San Diego stands 
upon a slope that rises from the water to the summit 
of a broad mesa. In front the bold promontory of 
Point Loma juts into the sea, overlapping the low 
slender peninsular of Coronado, and between them 
lies the narrow entrance to this most beautiful of 
harbors. One may be happy in San Diego and do 
nothing. Its soft sensuous beauty and caressing air 
create in the breast a new sense of the joy of mere 
existence. But there is, besides, abundant material 
for the sight-seer. Here, with many, begins the first 
leisurely and intimate acquaintance with those objects 
of unfailing interest, the growing orange and lemon. 
Orchards are on every hand; not in the profusion that 
characterizes some of the more extensively developed 
localities, but still abundant, and inferior to none in 
fruitage. Paradise Valley, the Valley of the Sweet- 
water, where may be seen the great irrigaling-fount 
of so many farms, and Mission Valley, where the San 
Diego River flows and the dismantled ruin of the 
oldest California mission, elbowed by a modern In- 
dian school, watches over its ancient but still vigorous 
trees, afford the most impressive examples of these 
growing fruits in the immediate neighborhood. El 
Cajon Valley is celebrated for its vineyards. At Na- 
tional City, four miles away, are extensive olive- 
orchards. Fifteen miles to the south the Mexican 
village of Tia Juana attracts many visitors, whose 
average experience consists of a pleasant railroad-ride 
to the border and a half-hour's residence in a foreign 
country; but the noble coast scenery of Point of 
Rocks, the boundary monument, and remarkable hot 
sulphur springs are reached by a short and attractive 
drive from that little Lower California town. 
6i 




The diverse allurements of mountain and valley, 
and northward-stretching shore of alternating- beach 
and high commanding bluff, are innumerable, but 
the catalogue of their names does not fall within the 
province of these pages. One marvelous bit of coast, 
thirteen miles away and easily reached by railway or 
carriage-drive, must however have specific mention. 
It is La Jolla Park. Here a plateau overlooks the open 
sea from a bluff that tumbles precipitously to a nar- 
row strip of sand. The face of the cliff for a dis- 
tance of several miles has been sculptured by the 
waves into most curious forms. It projects in rect- 
angular blocks, in stumps, stools, benches, and bas- 
reliefs that strikingly resemble natural objects, their 
surfaces chiseled intaglio with almost intelligible de- 
vices. Loosened fragments have worn deep sym- 
metrical wells, or pot-holes, to which the somewhat 
inadequate Spanish-Indian name of the place is due; 
and what seem at first glance to be enormous bowlders 
loosely piled, with spacious interstices through which 
the foam spurts and crashes, are the selfsame solid 
cliff, carved and polished, but not wholly separated 
by the sea. Some of the cavities are mere pockets 
lined with mussels and minute weeds with calcareous 
leaves. Others are commodious secluded apart- 
ments, quite commonly used as dressing-rooms by 
bathers. The real caverns can be entered dry-shod 
only at lowest tide. The cliff where they lie is 
gnawed into columns, arches and aisles, through 
which one cave after another may be seen, dimly 
lighted, dry and practicable. Seventy-five feet is 
probably their utmost depth. They are the culmi- 
nation of this extraordinary work of an insensate 
sculptor. There are alcove niches, friezes of small 
gray and black mosaic, horizontal bands of red, and 
high-vaulted roofs. If the native California Indians 
had possessed a poetic temperament they must cer- 
62 





tainly have performed religious rites in such a temple. 
It would have been a godsend to the Druids. The 
water is as pellucid as a mountain-spring. The flush 
of the waves foams dazzling white and pours through 
the intricacies of countless channels, tunnels and 
fissures in overwhelming torrents, and in the brief 
intervals between ebb and rise the bottom of rock 
and clean sand gleams invitingly through a depth of 
many feet. Sea-anemones are thickly clustered upon 
the lower levels, their tinted petal-filaments scintil- 
lating in the shallow element, or closed bud-like 
while waiting for the flood. Little crabs scamper in 
disorderly procession through the crevices at your 
approach, and that univalve with the ornamental 
shell, known everywhere as the abalone, is also 
abundant. vSeaweeds, trailing in and out with the 
movement of the tide, flame through the transparent 
water in twenty shades of green, arid schools of gold- 
fish flash in the swirling current, distorted by the 
varying density of the eddies into great blotches of 
brilliant color, unquenchable firebrands darting hither 
and yon in their play. They are not the true gold- 
fish whose habitat is a globular glass half-filled with 
tepid water, but their hue is every whit as vivid. In 
the time of flowers this whole plateau is covered with 
odorous bloom. 

63 



Then there is Coronado. Connected by ferry and by 
railroad with the mainland, Coronado bears the same 
relation to San Diego that fashionable suburbs bear 
to many Eastern cities, and at the same time affords 
recreative pleasures which the inhabitants of those 
suburbs must go far to seek. Here the business-man 
dwells in Elysian bowers by the sea, screened from 
every reminder of business cares, yet barely a mile 
distant from office or shop. Locking up in his desk 
at evening all the prosaic details of bank or factory, 
of railroad-rates, of the price of stocks and real es- 
tate and wares, in ten minutes he is at home on what 
is in effect a South Sea island, where brant and 
curlew and pelican fly, and not all the myriad dwell- 
ings and the pomp of their one architectural splen- 
dor can disturb the air of perfect restfulness and 
sweet rusticity. From the low ridge of the narrow 
peninsular may be seen, upon the one hand, a wide- 
sweeping mountainous arc, dipping to the pretty city 
that borders the bay. Upon the other, the unob- 
structed ocean rolls. Upon the ocean side, just be- 
yond reach of the waves, stands the hotel whose 
magnificence has given it leading rank among the 
famous hostelries of the world. It is built around a 
quadrangular court, ox patio — a dense garden of rare 
shrubs and flowering plants more than an acre in ex- 
tent. Upon this/<^z//<?many sleeping rooms open by 
way of the circumjacent balcony, besides fronting 
upon ocean and bay, and a glass-covered veranda, 
extending nearly the entire length of the western 
frontage, looks over the sea toward the peaks of the 
distant Coronado Islands. On the north lies Point 
Loma and the harbor-entrance, on the east San Diego 
Bay and city, and on the south Glorietta Bay and 
the mountains of Mexico, beyond a broad half-circle 
of lawn dotted with semi-tropical trees and bright 
beds of flowers, and bordered by hedges of cypress. 

64 



wCJU 








66 



Here the fisherman has choice of surf or billow 
or the still surface of sheltered waters ; of sailboat, 
skifif or iron pier. The gunner finds no lack of 
sea-fowl, quail or rabbits. The bather may choose 
between surf and huge tanks of salt-water, roofed 
with glass, fringed with flowers, and fitted with de- 
vices to enhance his sport. The sight-seer is pro- 
vided with a score of special local attractions, and 
all the resources of the mainland are at elbow. 
These diversions are the advantage of geographical 
location, independent of the social recreations one 
naturally finds in fashionable resorts, at hotels liber- 
ally managed and frequented by representatives of 
the leisure class. 

The climate of the coast is necessarily distin- 
guished from that of the interior by greater humid- 
ity, and the percentage of invisible moisiure in the 
air, however small, must infallibly be greater at Cor- 
onado than upon the Heights of San Diego, and 
greater in San Diego than at points farther removed 
Irom the sea. This is the clue to the only flaw in 
the otherwise perfect coast climate, and it is a flaw 
only to supersensitive persons, invalids of a certain 
class. The consumptive too often delays taking- 
advantage of the benefits of climatic change until 
he has reached a point when nicest discrimination 
has become necessary. The purest, driest and 
most rarefied air compatible with the complications 
of disease is his remedy, if remedy exist for him. 
And the driest and most rarefied air is not to be 
looked for by the sea. Yet the difference is not 
great enough to be brusquely prohibitory. No one 
need fear to go to the coast, and a short stay will 
determine whether or no the relief that is sought 
can there be found; while for many derangements it 
is preferable to the interior. For him who is not in 
precarious condition the foregoing observations have 
67 




^-^^ 



no significance. He will find the climate of all 
Southern California a mere gradation of glory. But 
perhaps around San Diego, and at one or two other 
coast points, there will seem to be a spirit even gen- 
tler than that which rules the hills. 




CAPISTRANO. 

A tiny quaint village in a fertile valley that slopes 
from a mountain-wall to the sea, unkempt and mon- 
grel, a jumble of adobe-ruins, whitewashed hovels 
and low semi-modern structures, straggling like a 
moraine from the massive ruin of the Mission San 
Juan Capistrano. The mission dominates the val- 
ley. Go where you will, the eye turns to this co- 
lossal fragment, a forlorn but vital thing; broken, 
crushed, and yet undying. Swarthy faces are min- 
gled with the pale Saxon type, the music of the 
Spanish tongue is heard wherever you hear human 
speech, and from behind the lattices of the adobes 
come the tinkle of guitars and the cadence of soft 
voices in plaintive rhythm. The sun makes black 
shadows by every house and tree, and sweeps in 
broad unbroken light over the undulating hills to 
hazy mountain-tops; ground-squirrels scamper across 
the way, wild doves start up with whistling wings, 
and there is song of birds and cry of barnyard fowls. 
68 







y^' 





The essence of the scene is passing quiet and peace. 
The petty noises of the village are powerless to break 
the silence that enwraps the noble ruin; its dignity 
is as imperturbable as that of mountain and sea. 
Never was style of architecture more spontaneously 
in touch with its environment than that followed by 
the mission-builders. It is rhythm and cadence and 
rhyme. It is perfect art. Earthquake has rent, man 
has despoiled, time has renounced the Mission San 
Juan Capistrano, yet its pure nobility survives, in- 
destructible. The tower is fallen, the sanctuary is 
bare and weather-beaten, the cloisters of the quad- 
rangle are roofless, and the bones of forgotten pa- 
dres lie beneath the roots of tangled shrubbery; but 
the bells still hang in their rawhide lashings, and 
the cross rises white against the sky. A contemptu- 
ous century has rolled past, and the whole ambitious 
and once promising dream of monkish rule has long 
since ended, but this slow-crumbling structure will 
not have it so. Like some dethroned and superan- 
nuated king, whose insistent claim to royal function 
cloaks him with a certain grandeur, it sits in silent 
state, too venerable for disrespect and too august for 
pity. 

69 





STORY OF THE MISSIONS. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century the Span- 
ish throne, desiring to encourage colonization of its 
territory of Upper California, then unpeopled save 
by native Indian tribes, entered into an arrangement 
with the Order of St. Francis, by virtue of which 
that order undertook to establish missions in the 
new country which were to be the nuclei of future 
villages and cities, to which Spani. h subjects were 
encouraged to emigrate. By the terms of that ar- 
rangement the Franciscans were to possess the mis- 
sion properties and their revenues for ten years, 
which was deemed a sufficient period in which to 
fairly establish the colonies, when the entire prop- 
erty was to revert to the Spanish government. In 
point of fact the P^ranciscans were left in undisputed 
possession for more than half a centur) . 

The monk chosen to take charge, of the undertak- 
ing was Junipero Serra, a man of saintly piety and 
energetic character, who in childhood desired only 
70 



that he might be a priest, and in maturity earnestly 
wished to be a martyr. Seven years before the De- 
claration of the Independence of the American Colo- 
nies, in the early summer of 1769, he entered the 
bay of San Diego, 227 years after Cabrillo had dis- 
covered it for Spain, and 167 years aftc-r it had been 
surveyed and named by Viscaino, during all which 
preceding time the country had lain fallow. Within 
two months Serra had founded a mission near the 
mouth of the San Diego River, which five years after 
was removed some six miles up the valley to a point 
about three miles distant from the present city of 
San Diego. From that time one mission after an- 
other was founded, twenty-one in all, from San Diego 
along the coast as far north as San Francisco. The 
more important of these were built of stone and a 
hard burnt brick that even now will turn the edge of 
the finest trowel. The labor of their construction 
was appalling. Brick had to be burnt, stone quar- 
ried and dressed, and huge timbers for rafters 
brought on men's shoulders from the mountain for- 
ests, sometimes thirty miles distant, through rocky 
canons and over trackless hills. The Indians per- 
formed most of this labor, under direction of the 
fathers. These Indians were tractable, as a rule. 
Once, or twice at most, they rose against their 
masters, but the policy of the padres was kind- 
ness and forgiveness, although it must be inferred 
that the condition of the Indians over whom they 
claimed spiritual and temporal authority was a form 
of slavery, without all the cruelties that usually pertain 
to enforced servitude. They were the bondsmen of 
the padres, whose aim wjs to convert them to Chris- 
tianity and civilization, and many thousands of them 
were persuaded to cluster around the missions, their 
daughters becoming neophytes in the convents, and 
72 










the others contributing their labor to the erection of 
the enormous structures that occupied many acres of 
ground, and to the industries of agriculture, cattle- 
raising, and a variety of manufactures. There were, 
after the primitive fashion of the time, woolen mills, 
wood working and blacksmith shops, and such other 
manufactories as were practicable in the existing 
state of the arts, which could be made profitable. 
The mission properties soon became enormously 
valuable, their yearly revenues sometimes amounting 
to $2,000,000. The exportation of hides was one 
of the most important items, and-merchant-vcssels 
from our own Atlantic seaboard, from England and 
from Spain, sailed to the California coast for car- 
goes of that commodity. Dana's romantic and 
universally read "Two Years Before the Mast" is 
the record of such a voyage. He visited California 
more than half a century ago, and found its quaint 
Spanish-Indian life full of the picturesque and ro- 
mantic. 

The padres invariably selected a site favorable for 
defense, commanding views of entrancing scenery, 
on the slopes of the most fertile valleys and conven- 
ient to the running water which was the safeguard 
of agriculture in a country of sparse and uncertain 
rainfall. The Indians, less warlike in nature than 
the roving tribes east of the Rockies, were almost 
universally submissive. If there was ever an Arca- 
dia it was surely there and then. Against the blue 
of the sky, unspotted by a single cloud through many 
months of the year, snow crowned mountains rose in 
dazzling relief, while oranges, olives, figs, dates, 
bananas, and every other variety of temperate and 
sub-tropical fruits which had been introduced by the 
Spaniards, ripened in a sun whose ardency was tem- 
pered by the dryness of the air into an equability like 
that of June, while the regularly alternating breeze 
73 




fllli'iii;TjiT;; .^ - , 







that daily swept to and from ocean and mountain 
made summer and winter almost indistinguishable 
seasons, then as now, save for the welcome rains that 
characterize the latter. At the foot of the valley, 
t between the mountain-slopes, and never more than 
[^ a few miles away, the waters of the racific rocked 
placidly in the brilliant sunlight or broke in foam 
upon a broad beach of sand. In such a scene 
Spaniard and Indian plied their peaceful vocations, 
the one in picturesque national garb, the other almost 
innocent of clothing, while over and around them 
lay an atmosphere of sacredness which even to this 
day clings to the broken arches and crumbling walls. 
Over the peaceful valleys a veritable angelus rang. 
The mellow bells of the mission churches summoned 
dusky hordes to ceremonial devotion. Want and 
strife were unknown. Prosperity and brotherly love 
ruled as never before. 

It is true they had their trials. Earthquakes, 
which have been almost unknown in California for a 
quarter of a century, were then not uncommon, and 
were at times disastrous, /^io de los Temhlores was 
the name of a stream derived from' the frequency of 
earth rockings in the region through which it flowed; 
and in the second decade of our century the dreaded 
temblor \x\iS&i the 120-foot tower of the Mission San 
Juan Capistrano and sent it crashing down through 
the roof upon a congregation, of whom nearly forty 
perished. Those, too, were lawless times upon the 
main. Pirates, cruising the South Seas in quest of 
booty, hovered about the California coast, and then 
the mission men stood to their arms, while the women 
and children fled to the interior canons with their 
portable treasures. One buccaneer, Bouchard, re- 
pulsed in his attempt upon Dolores and Santa Bar- 
bara, descended successfully upon another mission 
and dwelt there riotously for a time, carousing, and 
74 




destroying such valuables as he couKl not carr}' 
away, while the entire population quaked in tli> 
forest along the Rio Trabuco. This was the sanu 
luckless San Juan Capistrano, six years after the 
earthquake visitation. Then, too, there were bicker- '<^*' 
ings of a political nature, and struggles for place, 
after the rule of Mexico had succeeded to that of 
Spain, but the common people troubled themselves 
little with such matters. 

'idle end of the l-'ranciscan dynasty came suddenly 
with the secularization of the mission property by the 
Mexican government to replete the exhausted treas- 
uries of Santa Ana. Sadly the fathers forsook the 
scene of their long labors, and silently the Indians 
melted away into the wilderness, and the darkness 
of their natural ways, save such as had intermarried 
with the families of Spanish soldiers and colonists. 
The churches are now, for the most part, only de- 
cayed legacies and fragmentary reminders of a time 
whose like the world will never know again. Save 
only three cr four, preserved by reverent hands, 
where modern worshipers, denationalized and clad in 
American dress, still kneel and recite their orisons, 
the venerable ruins are forsaken by all except the 
tourist and the antiquarian, and their bells are silent 
forever. One can not but feel the pity of it, for in 
the history of zealous servants of the cross there is 
hardly a more noteworthy name than that of Junipero 
Serra, and in the annals of their heroic endeavor 
there is no more signal instance of absolute fail- 
ure than his who founded the California missions, 
aside from the perpetuation of his saintly name 
They accomplished nothing, so far as can now be 
seen. The descendants of their converts, what few 
have survived contact with the Anglo-Saxon, have 
no discoverable worth, and, together with the greater 
75 










part of the original Spanish population, have faded 
away, as if a blight had fallen upon them. 

But so long as one stone remains upon another, 
and a single arch of the missions still stands, an 
atmosphere will abide there, something that does not 
come from mountain, or vale, or sea, or sky; the 
spirit of consecration, it may be; but if it is only the 
aroma of ancient and romantic associations, the sug- 
gestion of a peculiar phase of earnest and simple 
human life and quaint environment that is forever 
past, the mission-ruins must remain among the most 
interesting monuments in all our varied land, and 
will amply repay the inconsiderable effort and outlay 
required to enable the tourist to view them. San 
Diego, the oldest, San Luis Rey, the most poetically 
environed, San Juan Capistrano, of most tragic 
memory, San Gabriel, the most imposing, and Santa 
Barbara, the most perfectly preserved, will suffice 
the casual sight-seer. These also lie comparatively 
near together, and are all easily accessible; the first 
three being located on or adjacent to the railway-line 
between Los Angeles and San Diego, the fourth 
standing but a few miles from the first-named city, 
and the fifth being almost in the heart of the famous 
resort that bears its name. 

Reluctantly will the visitor tear himself from the 
encompassing charm of their roofless arches and rem- 
76 





iniscent shadows. They are a dream o 
World, indifferent to the sordidnessand turbulencyof 'f\ 
the New; one of the few things that have been spared ^ ' 
by a relentless past, whose habit is to sweep the things y^ 
of yesterday into oblivion. Almost can one hear 
the echoes of their sweet bells ringing out to heathen 
thousands the sunset and the dawn. 



)t the i)kl-L~^w,¥ r. • ^JESIJ'- v 




LOS ANGELES. 

One can hardly cross this continent of ours with- 
out gaining a new idea of the immense historical sig- 
nificance of the westward yearning of the Saxon, who 
in two and a half centuries has marched from Plymouth 
Rock to the Sunset Sea, and has subordinated every 
other people in his path from shore to shore. The 
Spaniard was a world-conqueror in his day, and mas- 
ter of California before the stars and stripes had been 
devised. The story of his subjugation of the south- 
western portion of the New World is the most brill- 
iant in modern history. It is a story of unexampled 
deeds of arms. Sword and cross, and love of fame 
and gold, are inextricably interwoven with it. The 
Saxon epic is a more complex tale of obscure hero- 
ism, of emigrant cavalcades, of pioneer homes, of 
business enterprise. The world may never know 
sublimer indifference to fatigue, suffering, and death 
than characterized the Spanish invaders of America 
for more than two centuries. Whatever the personal 
considerations that allured them, the extension of 
Spanish empire and the advancement of the cross 
amid barbarians was their effectual purpose. The 
conqjustador was a crusader, and with all his cruelty 
and rapacity he is a splendid figure of incarnate force. 
But the westward-flowing wave of Saxon conquest 
has set him, too, aside. In this fair land of Califor- 
nia, won at smallest cost, and seemingly created for 
him, his descendants to-day are little more than a 
77 




<iL: 



tattered fringe upon the edges of the displacing civ- 
ilization, lie has left his mark upon every mount- 
ain and valley, in names that will long endure, but 
himself htis been supplanted. He has not fled. He 
has diininished, faded away. 

In 1 78 1 he named this city Pueblo cij ia Reina de 
los Angeles (Town of the Queen of the Angels). The 
Saxon, the Man of Business now supreme, has re- 
~ tained only the last tv/o words of that high-sounding 
appellation; and hardly a greater proportion remains 
of the original atmosphere of this old Spanish tovvn. 
You will find a Spanish (Mexican) quarter, unkempt 
and adobe, containing elements of the picturesque; 
and in the modern portion of the city a restaurant or 
two where English is spoken in halting fashion by 
very pretty dark skinned girls, and you may satisfy, if 
not your appetite, perhaps a long-standing curiosity 
regarding tortillas, 3ind frijoles, and chill con came. 
As for taniales, they are, as with us, a matter of curb 
stone speculation. Sefiores, senoras and senoritas are 
plentifully encountered upon the streets, but are not, 
in general, distinguished by any peculiarity cf attire. 
Upon the borders of the city one finds more vivid 
types, and there X\\q. jacal^ a poor mud-hovel thatched 
with straw, is not quite extinct. The words Spanish 
and Mexican are commonly used in California to dis- 
tinguish a racial difference. Not a few of the ; pan- 
ish soldiery and colonists originally took wives from 
among the native Indians. Their offspring has had 
its charms for later comers of still other races, and a 
complexity of mixture has resulted. The term Mex- 
ican is generally understood to apply to this amalga- 
mation, those of pure Castilian descent preferring to 
be known as Spanish. The latter, numerically a small 
class, represent high types, and the persistency of 
the old strain is such that the poorest Mexican is to 
78 




^A^', 



a certain manner born. He wears a contented mien, 
as if his Diogenes-tub and his imperceptible larder 
were regal possessions, and he does not easily part 
with dignity and self-respect. 

The existence of these descendants of the Con- 
querors side by side with the exponents of the new 
regime is one of the charms of Los Angeles, It has 
others in historic vein. After its first overland con- 
nection with the East, by way of the Santa Fe Trail, 
it rapidly took on the character of a wild border- 
town; the influx of adventurers and the stimulation 
of an unwonted commerce transforming the Spanish 
idyl into a motley scene of remunerative trade, aban- 
doned carousal and desperate personal conflict. Its 
romantic career of progress and amelioration to its 
present enviable estate is marked by monuments that 
still endure, Fremont the Pathfinder here first raised 
the stars and stripes in 1846, and his after- residence 
as governor of the State is well preserved. And 
Winfield Scott Hancock, as a young captain of the 
army, had quarters in this historic town. 

In modern interest it stands for a type of the ma- 
terial development that belongs to our day. In i860 
it numbered 4,500 inhabitants; in 1880, 11,000; in 
i8gi, more than 50,000. Surrounded by hundreds 
of cultivated farms, whose varied products form the 
basis of its phenomenal activity and prosperity, it is 
a really great city. It is well paved, well lighted, 
and abundantly served by intramural railways. It 
has parks of extraordinary beauty, and avenues 
shaded by the eucalyptus and the pepper, that most 
esthetic of trees. Outside the immediate thorough- 
fares of trade the streets are bordered by attractive 
homes, fronted by grounds set with palm and orange 
and cypress, and blooming with flowers throughout 
the year. It is backed by the mountains that are 
always present in a California landscape, and fifteen 




miles away lies a vista of the sea, dotted with island- 
peaks. 

PASADENA. 

Just outside the limits of Los Angeles, intimately 
connected by railway and street-car lines, is Pasa- 
dena. For the origin of the name you may choose 
between the imputed Indian signification, Crown of 
the Valley, and a corruption of the Spanish Paso de 
Kdeii (Threshold of Eden). It is in any event the 
crown of that Eden, the San Gabriel Valley, which 
nestles warmly in its groves and rose-bowers below 
lofty bulwarks tipped with snow. Here an Eastern 
multitude makes regular winter home in modest 
cottage or imposing mansion, and nearly in the cen- 
ter of the valley, commanding a full circular sweep 
of its extent, stands an eminence crowned by the 
Raymond Hotel, of tourist fame. Every fruit and 
flower and every 'ornamental tree and shrub known 
to Southern California is represented in the elaborate 
grounds of this little realm. It is a playg ound of 
wealth, a Nob Hill of Paradise, blessed home of 
happy men and women and children who prefer 
this to vaunted foreign lands, aside from the discom- 
forts of crossing the Styx of a stormy Atlantic. 

The extensive ranch owned by Lucky Baldwin Ues 
near at hand, with its great vineyards, orchards, 
wineries and horse-training grounds. And it is from 
Pasadena one makes the ascent of Mount Wilson, 
and Mount Lowe. 

I 









}iSaj]»:l 






SS^f^&-^^-^\ 










RIVERSIDE AND VICINITY. 

A locality renowned for oranges, and oranges, and 
still more oranges, white and odorous with the bloom 
of them, yellow with the sheen of them, and rich 
with the gains of them; culminating in a busy little 
city overhung by the accustomed mountain-battle- 
ments and pendant to a glorious avenue many miles 
in leng h, lined with tall eucalyptus, drooping pep- 
per, and sprightly magnolia-trees in straight lines 
far as eye can see, and broken only by short lat- 
eral driveways through palm, orange and cypress 
to mansion homes. The almost continuous citrus- 
groves and vineyards of Riverside are the result of 
fifteen or twenty years of co-operative effort, sup- 
plemented by some preponderating advantages of 
location. 

It is the climax of the fair region that lies between 
Los Angeles and Redlands, through which, for the 
convenience of tourists, the trains of the Southern 
California Railway twice make daily circuit. The 
diagram of this circuit is a cross-belt or rough fig- 
ure 8, whose shape, associated with the idea of a 
comprehensive and speedy journey, is responsible for 
a name greatly relished in a "horsey" State: the 
Kite-shaped Track. Starting from Los Angeles, 
nearly thirty communities of this famous region are 
thus traversed, the most celebrated of which are, in 
order, Rivera, Santa Yd Springs, Fullerton, Ana- 
heim, Orange, Santa Ana, South Riverside, River- 
side, Colton, San Bernardino, Arrowhead, East 
Highland, Mentone, Redlands, North Ontario, Po- 
mona. Monrovia, Santa Anita and Pasadena. 



REDONDO AND SANTA MONICA. 

These are two popular beaches near Los Angeles, 
to both which frequent trains are run daily. Equipped 
with superb hotels and furnished with the many minor 




a^ 



s.l^^^^ 






-^ ^ J' L 



4 ' \- 1 




attractions that congregate at holiday-resorts, they 
are the Brighton and Manhattan beaches of this 
coast, enhanced by verdure and a softer chme, and 
a picturesquely varied shore. Both are locally cele- 
brated among lovers of bathing, boating and fish- 
ing. Santa Monica is the California home of polo. 
Redondo is the point of departure for Santa Cata- 
lina Island. 

SANTA CATALINA ISLAM), 

Twenty miles off the coast it rises, like Capri, 
from the sea, a many-peaked mountain-cap, varying 
in width from half a mile to nine miles, and more than 
twenty long. Its bold cliff-shores are broken by 
occasional pockets rimmed by a semicircular beach 
of sand. The most famous of these is Avalon, quite 
the most frequented camping-ground of Southern 
California. In midsummer its two hotels are filled 
to overflowing, and in the hundreds of tents clus- 
tered by the water's edge as many as 3,000 pleasure- 
seekers are gathered in the height of the season. 
Summer is the period of Santa Catalina's greatest 
animation, for then, as in other lands, comes vaca- 
tion-time. But there is even less variation of season 
than on the mainland, and the nights are soft and 
alluring, because the seaward-blowing mountain-air 
is robbed of all its chill in passing over the equable 
waters. Here after nightfall verandas and the beach 
are still thronged. The tiny harbor is filled with 
pleasure-craftof every description, from rowboatsto 
commodious yachts, and hundreds of bathers disport 
in the placid element. Wonderful are the waters of 
Avalon, blue as a Mediterranean sky and astonish- 
ingly clear. Over the side of your skiff you may 
gaze down through a hundred feet of transparency 
to where emerald weeds wave and myriad fishes, 
blue and brown and flaming red, swim over pebble 
84 






^ \ Ifo \ > or ^. 







.•; 



85 




and shell. Or, climbing the overhanging cliffs, you 
gain the fish-eagle's view of the life that teems in 
water-depths, and looking down half a thousand feet 
upon the fisherman in his boat see the bright hued 
fishes flashing far beneath him. He seems to hang 
suspended in the sky. 

Notable fishing is to be had. The barracuda is 
plentiful; likewise the yellow-tail, or sea-salmon, 
also generally taken by trolling, and frequently tip- 
ping a truthful scale at fifty pounds. Jewfishing is 
the most famous sport here, and probably the most 
exciting known anywhere to the hand-fisherman. It 
is commonly taken, and in weight ranges from 200 
to 400 pounds. The fisherman who hooks one is 
frequently dragged in his skiff for several miles, and 
finds himself nearly as much exhausted as the fish 
when it finally comes to gaff. 

Perhaps the greatest novelty of a trip to Santa 
Catalina, for most travelers, is the great number of 
flying-fish that inhabit its waters. At only a few 
miles' distance from the mainland they begin to leap 
from beneath the bows of the steamer, singly, by 
twos and by half-dozens, until one wearies of count- 
ing, and skim over the waves like so many swallows. 
The length of flight of which this poetic fish is 
capable proves usually a surprise, for in spite of its 
abundance off the Southern California coast its pre- 
cise character is none too generally known. In size, 
form, and color it may be roughly compared to the 
mackerel. Its "wings" are muscular fins whose 
spines are connected by a light but strong mem- 
brane, and are four in number. The hindermost 
pair are quite small, mere butterfly-wings of stouter 
fiber; the foremost pair attain a length of seven or 
eight inches, and when extended are two inches or 
more in breadth. Breaking from the water at a high 
rate of speed, but at a very low angle, the flying- 
86 



"III if'iiiiiri 'M-L* 




^;;^'<^.n^' 




fish extends these wing-like fins and liolds them 
rigid, like the set wings of a soaring hawk. With 
the lower flange of its deeply forked tail, which at 
first drags lightly, it sculls with a convulsive wriggle 
of the whole body that gives it the casual appear- 
ance of actJally winging its way. The additional 
impulse thus acquired lifts it entirely from the water, 
over whose surface it then scales without further 
effort for a long distance, until, losing in momentum 
and in the sustaining pressure of the air beneath its 
outstretched fins, it again touches the water, either 
to abruptly disappear or by renewed sculling to pro- 
long its flight. Often it remains above the waves 
until the eye can no longer distinguish its course in 
the distance. 

In the less-frequented portions of the island the 
wild goat is still common. But not long ago a party 
of hunters, better armed than educated, wrought 
havoc with the domestic sheep that are pastured there; 
and now if you wish to hunt the goat you must first 
procure a permit, and to obtain that you must adduce 
evidence of your ability to tell the one from the other 
upon sight. This precautionary measure tends to the 
preservation of both sheep and goat, and the real 
sportsman as well as the herdsman is benefited 
thereby. 

Three times a week steamers for Santa Catalina 
leave the pier at Redondo Beach, connecting with 
trains that are run from I>os Angeles. The exhila- 
rating ocean-ride and the unique pleasures of the isl- 
and can not be loo strongly commended. 
87 




SANTA BARBARA. 

Saint Barbara is, in Spain, venerated as the patron- 
ess of gunpowder and coast-defenses, and the invo- 
cation of her name seems to have occurred in the 
light of a desirable precaution to its founder, who 
was so fond of building missions by the sea; although, 
like one of our own heroes, who supplemented his 
trust in Providence by protecting his ammunition 
from the rain, he kept here, as at a number of other 
points, a garrison of soldiers and a few small cannon. 

It was long known the world over as " The Amer- 
ican Mentone," because in seeking a term to con- 
vey its characteristics some comparison with cele- 
brated resorts of Europe was thought necessary, and 
this particular comparison most fitting. Such defi- 
nition is no longer required. Santa Barbara is a name 
that everywhere evokes the soft picture of a rose- 
buried spot, more than a village, less than a city, ris- 
ing gently from the sea-rim by way of shaded avenue 
and plaza to the foot of the gray Santa Ynez Mount- 
ains, above whose peaks the condor loves to soar; 
where, when with us the winter winds are most bitter 
and ice and snow work a wicked will, every year they 
hold a riotous carnival of flowers, a unique Arcadian 
holiday of triumph. And behind all that lies an end- 
less variety of winsomeness. Not idly does the bright 
stingless air lure one to seek a new pleasure for each 
succeeding day. The flat beach is broken by rocky 
points where the surf spouts in white columns with 
deafening roar, and above it lies a long mesa dotted 
with live-oaks that looks down upon the little dream- 
ing mission city and far oceanward; and on the other 
hand the mountain-slopes beckon to innumerable 
glens, and, when the rains have come, to broad hill- 
sides of green and banks of blossom. There are 
long level drives by the shore, and up the prolific 



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valley to famous orchard-ranches; and Montccito, a 
fairyland of homes, is close at hand. 

Four of the Channel Islands lie opposite Santa 
Barbara: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and 
San Miguel. The last three are only less attractive 
by nature than Santa Catalina, of which mention 
was made in its place, and although equal facilities do 
not exist for the tourist, many persons find their way 
there by means of a fishing-boat which, t.vo or three 
times a week, leaves Santa Barbara for the island 
fishing-grounds. These islands, now permanently 
inhabited only by sheep-herders who tend flocks of 
many thousands, were once populated by a primitive 
people whose burial-mounds, as yet only partly ex- 
humed by casual visitors, are rich in archoeological 
treasures. 

Santa Barbara lies northwest from Los Angeles, 
on a branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It is 
the only one of the great resorts of Southern Califor- 
nia that is not located upon a proprietary line of 
the Santa Fv Rotttc. 

OSTRICH-FARMING. 

At Coronado, Santa Monica and two or three other 
points are exhibited troops of ostriches confined in 
paddocks. They are generally regarded as a mere 
curiosity by the visitor, but really represent an estab- 
lished California industry. The original farm lies 
on the border of the town of Fallbrook, a dozen 
miles northeast from Oceanside, beyond the poetic 
Mission San Luis Rey, through whose incomparable 
valley the stage -road leads. Here, where he roams 
with scores of his fellows over a quarter-section of 
hill and dale, the ostrich ceases to be exotic. He is at 
home, and his habits and personality become an easy 
and entertaining study. This Fallbrook ostrich-farm 
has been in operation since 1883, the locality having 
90 




been found to offer conditions closely resembling that 
portion oi South Africa in which ostrich-farming has 
so long been a source of wealth, breeding has been 
carried on until it has been definitely established that 
a California-bred ostrich is in every respect the equal 
of the imported African. There are about one hun- 
dred ostriches on this ranch, many having been sold, 
and others being absent on exhibition. Every phase 
of this remarkable bird, which in maturity yields ev- 
ery eight months 2Co of those costly plumes that are 
coveted by maids and dames, and all the novelties of 
its manipulation, are exhibited upon a large scale. 

WINTER SPORTS. 

Where out-of-door life is the rule, there being nei- 
ther frost nor chill throughout the day, recreation be- 
comes a matter of pure selection, unhampered by any 
climatic prohibition outside the relatively infrequent 
rainstorm. A few enthusiasts make a point of tak- 
ing a daily dip in the surf, but the practice does not 
reach the proportions of a popular pastime in mid- 
winter. Cross-country riding finds then its perfect 
season, the whole land being transformed into a gar- 
den, over enougli of which the horseman is free to 
wander. Happy must he be who knows a purer sport 
than to gallop, either singly or with comrades, in fra- 
grant morning air over a fresh sod spangled with 
poppy, violet, forget-me-not, larkspur, and alfileria; 
bursting through dense thickets of lilac and mustard 
to cross an intervening highway; dipping to verdant 
meadow-vales; skirting orchards heavy with fruit, 
and mounting tree-capped knolls that look off to 
glimmers of sea between the slopes of the hills. 
Coaching has its season then, as well, and the horn 
of the tallyho is frequently heard. For such as like 
to trifle with the snows from which they have fled, 
the foothills are at hand, serried with tall firs in 
91 





scattering growths or dense shadowy jungles, top- 
ping cafions where the wagon-trail crosses and re- 
crosses a stream by pleasant fords and the c ested 
mountain-quail skulks over the ridge above one's 
head. There may be had climbing to suit every 
taste, touching extremes of chaotic tangle of chap- 
arral and crag. There are cliffs over which the 
clear mountain-water tumbles sheer to great depths; 
notches through which the distant virginal cones 
of the highest peaks of the mother range may 
be seen in whitest ermine, huge pines dotting their 
drifts like petty clumps of weed. Underfoot, too, 
on the northerly slopes, is snow, just over the ridge 
from where the sun is as warm and the air as gentle 
as in the valley, save only the faintest sense of added 
vigor and rarefaction. So near do these extremes lie, 
and yet so effectually separated, you may thrust into 
the mouth of a snow-man a rose broken from the 
bush an hour or two before, and pelt him with or- 
anges plucked at the very mouth of the cailon. And 
one who is not too susceptible may comfortably lin- 
ger until the sun has set and above the lower dusky 
peaks the loftier ones glow rose-pink in the light of 
its aftershine; until the moon lights the fissures of 
the canon with a ghostly radiance against which the 
black shadows of the cliffs fall like ink-blots. 

If barracuda, Spanish mackerel, yellow- tail or 
jewfish should not be hungry, trout are plentiful in 
the mountain-streams. Mountain and valley quail, 
and snipe, furnish the most reliable sport for the 
average gunner. Good shots do not consider it a 
great feat to bring a hundred to bag in a day's out- 
ing. Ducks and geese are innumerable. Whole vast 
meadows are sometimes whitened with snow-geese, 
like a field with daisies, and the air above is filled 
with flying thousands. Deer are easily found by 
those who know how to hunt them, and mountain- 
92 



^^^"^^^^''^'''W^fWK^^ 



._. <r<yr'''' 



lions and cinnamon bear are not infrequently shot in 
the hills. 

The grizzly was once exceedingly common. One 
of the great sports of the old mission days was to 
hunt the grizzly on horseback with the riata for sole 
weapon, and it is of record that in a single neighbor- 
hood thirty or forty of these formidable brutes were 
sometimes captured in a night by roping, precisely 
as the modern cowboy ropes a steer; the secret of the 
sportsmen's immunity lying in the fact that the bear 
was almost simultaneously lassoed from different sides 
and in that manner rigidly pinioned. Ikit Crstts 
horribilis has long since retreated to deep solitudes, 
where his occasional pursuers, far from approaching 
him with a rawhide noose, go armed with lieavy re- 
peating-rifles, and even thus equipped are not eager 
to encounter him at very close range. 

Cricket is naturally a favorite diversion among the 
many young Englishmen who have located upon 
ranches; and yachting and polo do wol want for 
devotees. 

93 




/'jVl't' 



vrtt^"^'' 



NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. 



i 





^^i^^Y Northern California is commonly meant 
W-^yA all that portion north of the six lower- 
most counties. The distinclion has yet 
no political signihcance, but is generally 
recognized. To be geographically exact, the present 
stage is mainly confined to the middle of the State. 

Upon quitting Los Angeles a gradual relapse into 
aridity soon becomes apparent, until again you are 
fairly on a desert over whose flat dry sands the water 
mirage loves to hover, although it no longer mocks 
parched peiishing- caravans as in former days. Rail- 
roads have robbed these wastes of their terror, and 
oases here and there mark the h:mes of irrepressible 
settlers. This barren quickly gives place to the 
Tehachapi Pass, a scenic ma/e of detours and invo- 
lutions leading dow^n into vast irrigated lands in the 
fertile valley of the San Joaquin. At lierenda a short 
branch diverges eastward to Raymond, frcm which 
point stages ply to the renowned val'ey of the Sierra 
Nevada Range, whose majestic beauty is second only 
to that of the Grand Canon of the Colorado. 

All the world has heard of the Vosemite, of its 
cataract that plunges i,5CO feet sheer in one of 
its three downward leaps, of its thread-like cascade 
that bends to the wind through goo feet of descent, 
of its colossal domes, spires and arches of bare 
94 



„^„,,frrj1i^^^-~^ 



granite contrasted with soft tones of green forest 
and silver lake; and of the Big Trees of the Mariposa 
(]rovc, where more than three hundred specimens of 
the Sequoia gigantca are scattered over an area of 
several thousand acres. This is the regular ap roach 
to those scenes, of which the barest mention should 
surely suffice, their description having passed into 
the literature of every language. 

Beyond Berenda widening meadows slope lo a 
placid inlet of the sea, whose winding shore leads to 
Oakland IMer. Here a ferry crosses the bay to the 
city of San P^rancisco. 

Numberless matters of interest 'n this region, more 
or less widely known and certain to be "brought to 
the attention of the traveler en route, must be omit- 
ted from the pre.-ent account. 'I'he wise traveler, 
blessed with leisure, will stop by the way and look 
about him. Here is a Stale whose seaboard is as 
long as that which stretches from Massachusetts to 
Georgia, whose mountains are overtopped in North 
America only by those of Alaska, whose mines have 
astonished the world, whose wealth of cattle and 
sheep and horses is nearly half as great as that of 
its mines, whose vales have wrought revelation in 
gardening and fruit-culture, and whose natural prod- 
igies and landscape marvels are innumerable. But 
San Francisco, the region of the Santa Clara Valley 
and Lake Tahoe, which overlaps the border-line of 
Nevada, will be permitted to monopolize the remain- 
der of the space allotted to California. 




SAN FRANCISCO. 

The bay l f San Francisco is almost completely 
encircled by land. The Golden (L.te is the tideway, 
a narrow passage between the extremities of two 
peninsulars, upon the point of the southernmost of 
which the city stands. 

95 



Here too the Franciscan mission-builders were first 
upon tlie field, and the present name is a curtailment 
of Mission de los Dolores de Nuestro Padre San Fran- 
cisco de Assis^ an appellation commemorative of the 
sorrows of the originator of the order. The Mis- 
sion Dolores, founded in 1776, is still preserved with 
its little campo santo of the dead, a poor unsightly 
strangled thing, structurally unimposing and wholly 
wanting in the poetic atmosphere of semi-solitude 
that envelops the missions of Southern California. 
A modern cathedral overshadows it, and shops and 
dwellings jostle it. So nearly, in forty years, has all 
trace of the preceding three-quarters of a century been 
obliterated.' Changed from a Spanish to a Mexican 
province early in the century, then promptly stripped 
of the treasures that had been accumulated by monk- 
ish administration, and subsequently ceded to the 
United States, California had on the whole a dreamy, 
quiet life until that famous nugget was found in 1 848. 
Then followed the era of the Argonauts, seekers of 
the golden fleece, who flocked by the hundred thou- 
sand from Eastern towns and cities by way of the 
plains, the Isthmus and the Cape to dig in the gravel- 
beds; lawless adventurers in their train. San Fran- 
cisco practically dates from that period. Its story is 
a wild one, a working-out of order and stable com- 
mercial prosperity through chapters that treat of 
feverish gold-crazy m bs, of rapine grappled by the 
vigilance committee, of insurrection crushed by mil- 
itary force. And in this prosperity, oddly enough, 
the production of gold has been superseded in im- 
portance by other resources; for although California 
annually yields more precious metal than any other 
State, the yearly value of its marketed cattle, wool, 
cereals, roots, fruits, sugar and wines is twice as 
great, and forms the real commercial basis of the gn at 
city of the Pacific Coast, where the railroads of a con- 
96 




..^z**^- 




tinent and the fleets of two oceans clasp hands and 
complete the circuit of the globe. 

As if it were fearful of being hid, it is set upon 
not one but a score of hills, overlooking land and sea. 
As you near it, by way of Oakland Ferry, it appears 
to be built in terraced rows rising steeply from the 
water-front; but that is a bit of foreshortening. It 
is still rather motley in architecture. Low frame 
buildings were at first the rule, partly because they 
were sufficient to the climate and partly in deference 
to traditions of earthquake; but at length builders 
ventured taller structures, of brick and stone, and now 
every year many lofty elegant buildings are added. 
Certainly no one of them has been shaken down as 
yet, and possibly the architects have authority for 
believing that even Vulcan is superannuated and in 
his second childhood is appeased with a rattle. 

It is a city of fair aspect, undulating from the 
water's edge, M'here children play upon the broad 
sands and sea-lions clamber over jutting rocks, to 
heights of nearly a thousand feet. Overlooking the 
sands and the seal-rocks from a considerable bluff is 
the Cliff House resort, and towering above that is the 
magnificent sky-battlement known as Sutro Heights 
— a private property open to the public and embel- 
lished by landscape gardens and statuary. Other 
sights and scenes are the Golden Gate, the park of 
the same name — a thousand acres of familiar and rare 
trees, shrubs and flowers — the largest mint in the 
world, not a few magnificent public buildings, innu- 
merable phases of active commerce, and the con- 
trasting life of races representing nearly every nation 
of the world. 

CHINATOWN. 

A few steps from your hotel, at the turn of a cor- 
ner, you come at once upon the city of the Chinese. 
It is night, and under the soft glow of paper lanterns 




A STREET IN CHINATOWN. 

99 




and through the gloom of unlighted alleys weaves an 
oriental throng. Policemen doubtless stand upon a 
corner here and there, and small parties of tourists 
pick their way under lead of professional guides; the 
remaining thousands are Celestials all. The scene 
is of the Chinaman at home, very John, restored to 
authenticity of type by the countenance of numbers; 
and so in the twinkling of an eye you become a for- 
eigner in your own land, a tolerated guest in a fan- 
tastic realm whose chief apparent hold upon reality 
is its substratum of genuine wickedness. It is a gro- 
tesque jumble, a panopticon of peepshows: women 
shoemakers huddled in diminutive rooms; barbers 
with marvelous tackle shaving heads and chins, and 
cleaning ears and eyeballs, while their patrons sit in 
the constrained attitude of a victim, meekly holding 
the tray; clerks, armed with a long pointed stick 
dipped in ink, soberly making pictures of variant 
spiders in perpendicular rows; apothecaries expound- 
ing the medicinal virtues of desiccated toad and 
snake; gold-workers making bracelets of the precious 
metal to be welded about the arm of him who dares 
not trust Ills hoard to another's keep; restaurateurs 
serving really palatable conserves, with pots of de- 
lectable tea; shopkeepers vending strange foreign 
fruits and dubious edibles plucked from the depths 
of nightmare; merchants displaying infinitude of cu- 
rious trinkets and elaborate costly wares; worshipers 
and readers of the book of fate in rich temples niched 
with uncouth deities ; conventional actors playing 
interminable histrionics to respectful and appreciative 
auditors ; gamblers stoically venturing desperate 
games of chance with cards and dominoes; opium- 
smokers stretched upon their bunks in a hot atmos- 
phere heavy with sickening fumes; lepers dependent 
upon occasional alms flung by a hand that avoids the 
contamination of contact; female chattels, still fair 
loo 



and innocent of face despite unutterable wrongs, yet 
no whit above the level of their deep damnation — 
such is the Chinatown one brings away in lasting 
memory after three hours of peering, entering, as- 
cending, descending, crossing, and delving. A very 
orderly and quiet community, withal, for the Mon- 
golian is not commonly an obstreperous individual, 
and his vices are not of the kind that inflame to 
deeds of violence. He knows no more convivial 
bowl than a cup of tea. If he quits the gaming-ta- 
ble penniless, it is with a smile of patient melancholy. 
And his dens of deepest horror are silent as en- 
chanted halls. 

All except its innermost domestic life may be in- 
spected by the curious. The guides are discreet, and 
do not include the lowest spectacles except upon re- 
quest, although it is equally true that very many vis- 
itors, regarding the entire experience as one of the 
conventional sights of travel, go fortified with espe- 
cial hardihood and release their conductor from con- 
siderations of delicacy. 

The joss-houses, or temples, are hung with pon- 
derous gilded carvings, with costly draperies and rich 
machinery of worship. The deities are fearful con- 
ceptions, ferocious of countenance, bristling with 
hair and decked with tinseled robes. A tiny vestal- 
flame burns dimly in a corner, and near it stands a 
huge gong. An attendant strikes this gong vocifer- 
ously to arouse the god, and then prostrates himself 
before the altar, making three salaams. A couple of 
short billets, half-round, are then tossed into the air 
to bode good or ill luck to you according as they fall 
upon the one or the other side. A good augury hav- 
ing been secured by dint of persistent tossing, a 
quiverful of joss-sticks is next taken in hand and 
dextrously shaken until three have fallen to the floor. 
The sticks are numbered, and correspond to para* 
loi 





graphs in a fate-book that is next resorted to, and you 
are ultimately informed that you will live for forty 
years to come; that you will marry within two years, 
and, if your sex and air seem to countenance such a 
venture, that you will shortly make enormous win- 
nings at poker. Whatever of genuine solemnity may 
cloak the Heathen Chinee in his own relations to his 
bewhiskered deities, he undoubtedly tips the wink to 
them when the temple is invaded by itinerant sight- 
seers. The smooth, spectacled interpreter of desti- 
nies pays $5,000 a year for the privilege of purveying 
such mummeries, and hardly can the Heathen Chi- 
nee himself repress a twinkle of humor at the lermi- 
nation of a scene in which he so easily comes off 
best, having fairly outdone his Caucasian critic in 
cynicism, and for a price. 

In the theater he will be found, perhaps contrary 
to expectation, to take a serious view of art. You 
are conducted by a tortuous underground passage of 
successive step-ladders and narrow ways, past innu- 
merable bunk-rooms of opium-smokers, to the stage 
itself, where your entrance creates no disturbance. 
The Chinese stage is peculiar in that while the act- 
ors are outnumbered ten to one by supernumeraries, 
musicians and Caucasian visitors, they monopolize 
the intellectual recognition of the audience. The 
men who, hat on head, pack the pit, and the women 
who throng the two galleries, divided into respect 
able and unrespectable by a rigid meridian, have 
been educated to a view of the drama which is hardly 
to be ridiculed by nations that admit the concert and 
the oratorio. The Chinese simply need less ocular 
illusion than we in the theater, and perhaps those of 
us who are familiar with the grotesque devices by 
which our own stage-veneer is wrought perform no 
less an intellectual feat than they. Their actors are 
ndeed richly costumed, and, women not being per- 
102 




mitted upon the stage, the youths who play female 
roles are carefully made up for their parts; and one 
and all they endeavor to impersonate. Almost no 
other illusion is considered necessary. The stage - 
manager and his assistants now and then erect a 
small background suggestive of environment, and the 
province of the orchestra is to accentuate emotion — 
in which heaven knows they attain no small degree 
of success. It is highly conventionalized drama, in 
which any kind of incongruity may elbow the play- 
ers provided it does not confuse the mind by actu- 
ally intervening between them and the audience. 
The plays are largely historical, or at least legend- 
ary, and vary in length from six or eight hours to a 
serial of many consecutive nights' duration. There 
are stars whose celebrity packs the house to the limit 
of standing-room, and there are the same strained 
silent attention and quick rippling response to witty 
passages that mark our own playhouses; but such 
demonstrative applause as the clapping of hands and 
the stamping of feet is unknown. The Chinese 
theatergoer would as soon think of so testifying en- 
joyment of a good book in the quiet of his home. But 
as for the orchestra, let them write its justification! 
Such a banging of cymbals, and hammering of 
gongs, and monotonous squealing of stringed in- 
struments in unrememberable minor intervals almost 
transcends belief. Without visible leader, and un- 
marked by any discoverable rhythm, it is nevertheless 
characterized by unanimity of attack and termina-' 
tion, as well as enthusiasm of execution, and histo- 
rians of music are authority for the statement that it 
is based upon an established scale and a scientific 
theory. Be that as it may, it is a thing of terror first 
to greet the ear on approach, last to quit it in de- 
parture, and may be counted upon for visitation in 
dreams that follow indigestion. 
104 




CHINESE RESTAURANT. 
I05 



The secret society known as the Highbinders was 
created two and a half centuries ago in China by a 
band of devoted patriots, and had degenerated into 
an organization employed to further the ends of av- 
arice and revenge long before it was transplanted to 
this country. Relieved of the espionage that had in 
some measure controlled it at home, and easily able 
to evade a police unfamiliar with the Chinese tongue, 
it grew in numbers and power with great rapidity. 
The greater portion of the people of Chinatown has 
always been honestly industrious and law abiding, 
but the society rewarded hostility by persecution, 
ruin and often death. Merchants were laid under 
tribute, and every form of industry in the commu- 
nity that was not directly protected by membership in 
the society was compelled to yield its quota of reve- 
nue. Vice was fostered, and courts of law were so 
corrupted by intimidation or bribery of witnesses 
that it was next to impossible to convict a High- 
binder of any criminal offense. A climax of terror 
was reached that at last convulsed the environing 
city, and by the pure effrontery of autocratic power 
the society itself precipitated its downfall. A per- 
emptory word was given to the police, and there en- 
sued a scene which the astonished Celestials were 
forced to accept as a practical termination of their 
bloody drama; a small epic of civilization intent 
on the elevation of heathendom, no inconsiderable 
portion of which in a short space was blown sky 
high. The Highbinders were scattered, many im- 
prisoned or executed, innumerable dives emptied, 
temples and secret council-rooms stripped bare, and 
the society in effect undone. Yet still, for one who 
has viewed the lowest depths of the Chinatown of 
to-day, the name will long revive an uncherished 
memory of two typical faces, outlined upon a back 
ground of nether flame. One is the face of a young 
1 06 




BALCONY OF JOSS-HOUSE. 
107 



woman who in a cell far underground leans against 
a high couch in a manner half-wanton, half-indiffer- 
ent, and chants an unintelligible barbaric strain. 
The other is that of her owner, needing only a hang- 
man's knot beneath the ear to complete a wholly 
satisfactory presentment of irredeemable depravity. 
And that is why one quits the endless novelties of 
the peepshow without regret, and draws a breath of 
relief upon regaining the familiar streets of civili- 
zation. 

SANTA CLARA VALLEY. 

Below the junction of San Francisco's peninsular 
with the mainland the Santa Clara Valley stretches 
southward between the Toast and Santa Cruz ranges. 
Along this valley lies the way to San Jose and the 
coast-resorts of Santa Cruz and Monterey, past inter- 
mediate points of celebrity. 

I^alo Alto is the site of the Stanford University, 
where in a campus of 8,000 acres, an arboretum to 
which every clime has liberally contributed, stands 
this magnificent memorial of a cherished son. The 
buildings are conceived in the style of mission archi- 
tecture — low structures connected by an arcade sur- 
rounding an immense inner court, with plain thick- 
walls, arches and columns, built of buff sandstone, 
and roofed with red tiles. Richly endowed, this uni- 
versity is broadly and ambitiously planned, and is 
open to both sexes in all departments. 

Hard by, at Menio Park, is Mr. Stanford's horse 
breeding and training establishment, where hundreds 
of thoroughbreds are carefully tended in paddock and 
stable, and daily trained. Even one who is not a 
lover of horses, if such person exists, can not fail to 
find entertainment here, where daily every phase of 
equine training is exhibited from the kindergarten 
where toddling colts are taught the habit of the track 
to the open course where famous racers are speeded. 
108 




^i^/S/C/*^ 



*<^ 



Perhaps there is not, in the whole of Northern 
California, a town more attractively environed than 
San Jose. It lies in the heart of the valley, pro- 
tected by mountain-walls from every wandering 
asperity of land or sea, a clean, regularly platted city, 
reaching off through avenues of pine and of euca- 
lyptus, and through orchards and vineyards, to pretty 
forest-slopes where roads climb past rock, glen and 
rivulet to fair commanding heights. The immediate 
neighborhood is the center of prune production, and 
every year exports great quantities of berries, fruits 
and wines. The largest seed-farms and the largest 
herd of short-horn cattle in the world are here. 

Twenty-six miles east from San Jose is Mount 
Hamilton, upon whose summit the white wall of the 
Lick Observatory is plainly visible at that distance. 
This observatory has already become celebrated for 
the discovery of Jupiter's fifth satellite, and gives 
promise of affording many another astronomical sen- 
sation in time to come. Visitors are permitted to look 
through the great telescope one night in the week, 
and in the intervals a smaller glass, sufficiently pow- 
erful to yield a good view of the planets in the broad 
sunlight of midday, is devoted to their entertainment. 
It is reached by stage from San Jose, the round trip 
being made daily. Aside from the attraction of the 
famous sky-glass, supplemented by the multitudin- 
ous and elaborate mechanisms of the observatory, 
the ride through the mountains to Mount Hamilton 
more than compensates the small fatigue of the jour- 
ney. There are backward glimpses of the beautiful 
valley, and a changing panorama of the Sierra, the 
road making loops and turns in the shadow of live- 
oaks on the brink of profound crater-like depres- 
sions. 

Santa Cruz is a popular resort by the sea, pos- 
109 




sessing picturesque rocks and a fine background of 
the mountains that bear its name. Near at hand is a 
much-visited grove of Big Trees, the approach to 
which leads through oak and fir, past canons fringed 
v^^ith madrona and manzanlta, and fern and flower. 

Monterey was the old capital of California in the 
earliest period of Spanish rule. Here the forest 
crowds upon the sea and mingles its odor of balm 
with that of the brine. The beach that divides them 
is broken by cliffs where the cypress finds footing to 
flaunt its rugged boughs above the spray of the waves, 
and in the gentle air of a perfect climate the wild 
flowers hold almost perpetual carnival. Upon such 
a foundation the Hotel del Monte, with its vast parks 
of lawn and garden and driveway, covering many 
hundred acres, is set, all its magnificence lending 
really less than it owes to the infinite charm of Mon- 
terey. Its fame has spread through every civilized 
land, and European as well as American visitors 
make up its throng. Here, as elsewhere upon the 
coast, foreign travelers are seen most in that season 
when the extraordinary equability of winter allures 
them by contrast with their native environment, but 
the Californian knows its summer aspect to be no 
less winsome; and so, from the year's beginning to 
its end, there is one long gala-day at Monterey, its 
parks and beaches and forests animated by wealthy 
and fashionable pleasure -seekers. The Del Monte 
is located in a scattering grove of 200 acres, a little 
east from the town, and for lavishness of luxury 
and splendor in construction and accessory has per- 
haps no superior. Bathing, boating, camping and 
driving are the current out-of-door activities, and 
specific points of interest are the Carmel Mission, 
Pacific Grove, Moss Beach, Seal Rocks, Cypress 
Point and Point Pinos Lighthouse. The amount of 
yearly rainfall at Monterey is more than at San 
no 



Diego and less than at Santa Barbara. The mean 
midsummer temperature is the same, namely, 65*-', 
but in winter the thermometer averages lower, the 
mean temperature of January being 50° at Monterey, 
56° at Santa Barbara and 57^ at San Diego. These 
ligures compare most favorably with the records of 
European resorts, and the absence of humidity works 
a further amelioration, both in summer and winter, 
firmly establishing the resorts of California as char- 
acterized by the most equable climate known. 




LAKE TAHOE. 

More than 6 000 feet above the sea, among mount- 
ains that rise from its edge to a further altitude of 
from 2,000 to 5,000 feet, and surrounded by the deep 
forest, this lake unites the highest poetic beauty with 
definite attractions for the artist and the sportsman. 
It is twenty-five miles long and half as wide, and 
reaches a depth of 1,700 feet. Hotels and cott9,ges 
sprinkle its shores, little steamers ply upon its silvery 
surface, and there are tents and boats of camping 
fishermen and hunters. Here to the aromatic odor 
of the forest come lovers of pure joys for compara- 
tive solitude in the heart of nature. In the adjacent 
wilderness there is game to tax the address of the 
bravest gunner, and mountain-streams shout in tor- 
rent through a thousand fierce tangles of woodland 
dear to artists and unprofessional lovers of untram- 
meled beauty; and from the mountain-tops one may 
look far out over the barriers that strive to secrete 
this exquisite spot from the outer world. Fragments 
of its loveliness have been copied by many a brush 
and many a camera, poets have sung of it, travelers 
liave told of it in labored prose; but Lake Tahoe 
eludes translation. Have you ever chanced upon a 
spot where Nature, turning from gorgeous pigments 
112 



and heroic canvases in a swift softening mood had 
spent the white heat of inspiration upon a picture in 
which was permitted neither asperity nor want of 
perfect grace, a thing finely poised between grandeur 
and gentleness, wood and water and mountain and 
sky rhymed in every line and tone to a fine exalta- 
tion such as the Greek knew when he dreamed a 
statue out of the marble? Tahoe is of that category. 
It is reached by stage from Truckee, on the line of 
the Central Pacific, our returning eastward route 
from San Francisco. 



^^C 







^^^ 



VI. 

NEVADA AND UTAH. 




'EVADA formerly existed as part of the Ter- 
ritory of Utah, and having leaped into 
sudden significance with the discovery of 
silver sulphurets in 1S58 was separately 
organized and admitted into the Union during the 
Civil War. Trappers were its pioneers in 1825, over- 
land emigrants crossed it as early as 1834, and the 
113 



explorations of Fremont began nine years later. It 
is a land of silver and sage-brush, and steaming min- 
eral springs; of salt and borax and sulphur; of par- 
allel mountain-ranges, rolling plains and flat alkaline 
sands, of limpid fish- thronged lakes and brackish 
sinkholes that suck the flow of its rivers. Its com- 
position is endlessly diverse, and there is abundance 
of noble scenery, but this does not generally lie ad- 
jacent to the railway-route. In its transit the tour- 
ist will not unlikely be aware of a few hours of mo- 
notony — the first and the last to be encountered in 
the entire course of the journey. Reno, Winnemuc- 
ca, and Elko are the chief cities that will be seen, 
and Humboldt River is followed closely for the great- 
er part of the distance across the State. Nevada, as 
everybody knows, means snowy. The name was de- 
rived from the range upon its western border, and 
was not suggested by any characteristic of the cli- 
mate, which is dry and healthful, and, save in ex- 
treme altitudes, notably temperate. 

Crossing the Utah line, and keeping well above 
the edge of the desolate barren noted on the maps 
as the Great Salt Lake Desert, you come quickly 
into view of the Great Salt Lake itself, whose shore 
is approximately followed for half its circumference 
upon the north and east. Between the eastern 
shore and the Wasatch Range the southward-trend- 
ing valley stretches for many miles. Ogden, Salt 
Lake City, Provo, Springville, and numerous pretty 
Mormon villages are scattered along the line, and 
there is a large body of fresh water known as Utah 
Lake, linked to the great salt inland sea by the Jor- 
dan River. America boasts no fairer or more fruit- 
ful valley thaji this. Beyond, the circular eastward 
sweep of the route passes Red Narrows, Soldier Sum- 
mit, Castle Gate, Green River, and the Book Cliffs, 
114 



.-J!^ 




.^^^^^^r^--^ — ^ 







^Z*'/'^/ 



>-A- 



and leads through the noble valley of the Grand River 
to the Colorado boundary at Utaline. 

Desert, broken by innumerable lovely oases; salt 
sea and fresh-water lake; monuments of an institu- 
tion of world-wide notoriety and its communities 
alternating or mingled with " Gentile " population; 
mountain-passes, canons, noble gateways, and mem- 
orable rock-formations and river-valleys — these arc 
the distinguishing features of Utah. 



OC.DEN. 

Focal point of converging railroads from the east 
and west, and nourished by many thousand acres of 
irrigated land immediately surrounding, Ogden is the 
second city of Utah in importance. The Wasatch 
Mountains protect it upon the east and north, and 
form a background of exceeding beauty here as else- 
where. The attractions of its environs include lakes, 
springs, rivers and parks, and Ogden Canon, a nine- 
US 



mile stretch of rugged rock-fissures and roaring 
waters. 

SALT LAKE CITY. 

Here in 1847 came Brigham Young and his band 
of Latter Day Saints, driven from the States by the 
unpopularity of their tenets and practice. The story 
of the Mormons is a tragic one, difficult reading for 
a dispassionate reader, like that of the Puritanic 
persecution of Quakers and reputed practitioners of 
witchcraft two centuries ago. It is true the Mormon 
offered an affront to the public sense of morality, but 
a later generation, that counts so many avowed ad- 
herents to the notion that even monogamous mar- 
riage is a failure, should have only commiseration 
for a sect committed to utter bankruptcy in that par- 
ticular. In any event, abhorrence of polygamy can 
not serve as excuse for the cruelties visited upon the 
early Mormons by the mobs that despoiled, mal- 
treated and murdered them. In this lies our dis- 
grace, part sectional, part national, that their one 
offensive characteristic was counted a forfeiture of 
their every human right, and their defiance of a sin- 
gle law made pretext for the violation of twenty in 
their persecution. They are familiar to the public 
mind almost solely in their character as polygamists 
claiming sanction of divine authority ; yet, although 
polygamy no longer exists in Utah, the Church of 
Latter Day Saints having formally renounced it, the 
name of Mormon still has power to awaken prejudice 
among those who know the sect only by repute. The 
abandonment of this prejudice is demanded not by 
charity but by common-sense. The patriarchal 
households of the pious old Jewish kin<;s are not 
more utterly a thing of the past than are those of 
the Mormons, and stripped of them Mormonism is 
not opposed to tenets that are current in other reou- 
table churches. 

116 



The putative author of the Book of Mormon was a 
prophet of that name. It purports to be an abridg- 
ment of the book of the prophet Ether, which nar- 
rated that the Jaredites came to America in the great 
dispersion that followed the confusion of tongues at 
Babel, and were destroyed for their degeneracy in 
the year 600 B. C. In the same year Lehi led a 
second exodus, from Jerusalem, which landed at 
Chili, from which point the populating of North 
America was again begun. Ether's book was dis- 
covered by this colony, which in course of time was 
divided into two factions, the Nephites and the 
Lamanites. The former were eventually extermi- 
nated by the latter, who relapsed into barbarism and 
became the ancestral stock of our native Indians. 
Mormon was a prophet of the Nephites, and to the 
abridgment of Ether's story added an account of the 
history of the second colony, and hid his own tablets 
where they were found by Joseph Smith and by him 
miraculously translated. The basis of the religious 
teaching is Biblical; the exposition constitutes Lat- 
ter Day sanctity. 

The followers of Young found the Salt Lake Val- 
ley a desert of unproductiveness, despite the beauty 
of its contour. They made it an unprecedented 
oasis, a broad garden of lovely fertility. A band of 
pauper zealots, they camped upon a barren and com- 
pelled it to sustain them. They found inspiration in 
the striking topographical resemblance between their 
Deseret and Palestine, and gave the name Jordan to 
ihe little river that joined their two contrasting waters 
as old Jordan joins the Sea of Tiberias with the Dead 
Sea. They chose a site for Zion, and in its center, 
in 1S53, they laid the foundations of the Temple, 
which the predetermined forty years of building will 
hardly bring to completion. And as the government 
was of the Church, so the Temple was regarded as 
117 




the pivot of Zion. The ordinal numbers, combined 
with the four cardinal points, still serve to distin- 
guish the different streets of the city, as clearly in- 
dicating the exact relation of each to the location of 
the great edifice. Second West Street, East Fifth 
South Street, and the like, are finger-posts that guide 
the stranger infallibly to the Mormon mecca. 

It was a curious reversion to the old patriarchal 
idea of life, foreign to the spirit of our time, and so 
foredoomed to failure; but the dreamers had hard 
muscles and determined souls. They grubbed bush- 
es, they dug ditches, they irrigated, they fought the 
grasshopper, they subsisted on the substance of things 
hoped for, enduring extremes of hunger and priva- 
tion in the first years of their grapple with the des- 
ert. And by the time the reluctance of earth had 
been overcome and material prosperity had been won, 
the westward flow of emigration had brought about 
the human conflict once more. The records of that 
conflict have been written by the accustomed parti- 
san hands, but the plain truth is that whether we are 
Mormon, or Catholic, or Protestant, or Mohamme- 
dan, or Gentile pure and unalloyed, we are intolerant 
all; and when we lay hold upon an issue it is more 
than a meeting of Greeks, it is savage to savage, old 
Adam himself warring against himself in the persons 
of his common children. Mormonism was a dream 
of religious enthusiasm mixed with earthly dross, 
overthrown by dross of earth that invoked the name 
of religion. Yet the overthrow was plainly plotted 
by the higher powers, and the conquerors were in 
their employ. 

The distinguishing features of the sect, as now re- 
stricted, are not apparent to the casual traveler, to 
whom Zion is only a romantic and imposing relic of 
a day that has been outlived. But the orr;an!.:ation 
still endures, and there is no reason to doubt that its 
Ii8 







*i-^rfe^5==^^ 



, ^:i5 



distinction is vital enough in the sight of Mormons 
themselves, as it is to any clan, or denomination. In- 
dividually they are esteemed and respected among 
the "Gentiles" that have invaded Salt Lake City, 
and Brigham Young himself, in the fullness of his 
almost autocratic power, manifested many of the qual- 
ities that make great names in history. That he 
made scandalous misuse of that power is generally 
believed, and, however great he may have deemed 
the danger of his people, it is certain he rebelled 
against the Government of these United States; but 
he was essentially a great ler.der and a man of many 
broad and beneficent conceptions. As contractor he 
built hundreds of miles of the first transcontinental 
railroad, and built a connecting road nearly forty 
miles in length to place Salt Lake City in commercial 
intimacy with the outside world. The first telegraph- 
line to span the Rockies was principally constructed 
by him as contractor. And it is remembered of him 
that he furnished a Mormon battalion to the Mexican 
War, and protected from Indian depredations the 
transportation of the United States mails through 
Utah at a time when Government troops could not 
be spared for the service. The establishment of the 
Territory of Utah was the death-knell of the State 
of Deseret which he had founded, yet the President 
had enough confidence in his loyalty to appoint him 
its first governor. That he should in the unavoida- 
ble ultimate issue take positive ground on the side of 
his people was to have been expected of the Mormon 
leader. 

Young is the personification of the sect to the 
world at large, and his memory overhangs Salt Lake 
City, perpetuated in the broad private grounds with 
their high walls and imposing gateway, where so long 
he dwelt, and where in death he lies buried. And 
near at hand are the erstwhile palaces of his favorite 
121 




wives, and miscellaneous structures that had relig- 
ious and governmental uses in the singular day of 
his prime. 

GREAT SALT LAKE. 

Great Salt Lake has lost nineteen-twentieths of its 
original dimensions, which still are traceable. Its 
area was once equal to one-half that of the present 
Territory. It now covers an extent of about 2,000 
square miles, in which are included a dozen or more 
mountain-islands. Its waters are temperately warm 
and five times as salt as the ocean. The human 
body floats upon their surface with cork-like buoy- 
ancy, without the slightest sustaining effort. You 
may double your knees under you and recline upon 
it, like a cherub on a cloud, with head and shoulders 
protruding. With sun-umbrella and book you may 
idly float and read at pleasure, or safely take a nap 
upon the bosom of Salt Lake if you can contrive to 
maintain a suitable balance meanwhile; for you will 
find a marked disposition on the part of this brine 
to turn you face down, which position is anything 
but a pleasant pickle when unexpectedly assumed, 
for the membrane of eyes and nose and mouth is not 
on friendly terms with such saline bitterness. The 
shore of the lake is a few miles distant from the city, 
and Garfield Beach, some eighteen miles away, is 
the most popular bathing-resort. Here a pavilion 
and whole streets and avenues of dressing rooms 
have been provided for the hundreds of bathers 
who every day in season flock to the lake. Every- 
body bathes, and the scene, novel and amusing by 
reason of the remarkable specific gravity of the water, 
is unlike that of any other watering-place. The nat- 
122 




ural aspect is full of soft beauty, not unlike that of the 
South California shore, lookingoff to the coast islands 
of the Pacific, save that the semi-tropical veg-etation 
is wanting. 

Sa't Lake is a Dead Sea, bare of lish or fowl ex- 
cept for a minute and not numerous species of the 
former. There is said to be a Mormon tradition 
that in the time of their grasshopper plague an enor- 
mous flight of gulls issued from its horizon and 
cleared the fields of their pest. The spectacle of 
those sea-scavengers waddling through the brown 
stubble in pursuit of the grasshopper must have been 
diverting, at least, and the occurrence was doubtless 
miraculous if true. 

123 




VII. 



COLORADO. 




[HIS State is the apex of North America, 
the crown of the slopes that rise from 
Pacific and Atlantic shores. It is the 
heart of the Rocky Mountain chain, num- 
bering hundreds of individual summits that rise to a 
height of more than 13,000 feet, and many whose 
altitude exceeds 14,000. Between the ranges lie 
numerous parks, broad basins of great fertility and 
surpassing loveliness, diversified by forest, lake and 
stream, and themselves exalted to an altitude of from 
eight to ten thousand feet. The precipitous water- 
sheds of this titanic land give birth to many impor- 
tant rivers, such as the Platte, Arkansas, Rio Grande 
del Norte, and Grand, whose channels, save where 
they occasionally loiter through the alluvial parks, are 
marked by fierce cataracts and gloomy gorges. 

This Alpine land of prodigious scenery and inspir- 
iting air, and of phenomenal mineral and agiicultur- 
al wealth, we now enter upon the west. Every suc- 
cessive scene is an event, every turn of the way a 

The canons of the Grand River have not infrequently been 
confounded with the Grand Canon of the Colorado River, by 
tourists who have not visited the latter, in consequent, e of an 
unfortunate coincidence of names, and further confusion has 
resulted from the useof the title "Grand Caiion" in connection 
with the gorges of the Gunnison and the Arkansas. The 
Grand Canon of the Colorado River is entitled by divine right 
to a monopoly of the name. It is situated in Arizona, and was 
described in Its place. 

124 




revelation, advancing in ascending- climaxes. The 
first stage, 120 miles along the valley of the Grand 
River, past Grand Junction, at the confluence of the 
Gunnison, to Glenwood vSprings, serves for introduc- 
tion. From that point on, specific mention becomes 
necessary. 

GLENWOOD SPRINGS. 

Where the Grand River issues from somber canon- 
walls into a mountain-hemmed valley, just above the 
confluence of the foaming torrent of Roaring Fork, 
numerous thermal springs of saline and chalybeate 
waters boil from its bed and from its grass covered 
banks, and natural caves are filled with their vapor. 
Here is Glenwood Springs, lately the resort of Utes, 
and the home of deer, elk, and bear, which latter 
have retreated only to the bordering forest. Young- 
est of the great watering-places of Colorado, its dis- 
tinction lies in the extraordinary character and volu- 
minous flow of the springs, the unique manner in 
which they have been brought into service, and the 
superb hotel, bath-house and park with which the 
natural attractiveness of the spot has been perfected. 
In the middle of the exquisite park the largest spring 
feeds an enormous pool, covering more than an acre, 
from three to five feet deep, paved with smooth brick 
and walled with sandstone. A fountain of cold 
mountain-water in the center tempers the pool to 
gradations that radiate to its rims. Here bathing is 
in season throughout the year. In winter or sum- 
mer the temperature of the water and of the imme- 
diate atmosphere has the same delicious warmth, and 
all the snow and ice that Colorado can boast in Jan- 
uary at an altitude of over five thousand feet does 
not interfere with out-of-door bathing at Glenwood 
Springs. The bath is neither enervating nor stimu- 
lating in any violent degree. An hour in the pool 




is not followed by exhaustion ; it is a thoroughly en- 
joyable pleasure, beneficial in effect. Catarrh, rheu- 
matism, diseases of the blood, and many ailments 
that do not yield to medicine are either wholly cured 
or relieved by these waters. The bath-house by the 
side of the pool is no less than a palace in architect- 
ure and sumptuous equipment. Here are private 
bath-rooms, with attendants and all manner of ap- 
pliances, for those who prefer them, or to whom 
the public pool is unsuited. Radical treatment is 
given in the vapor-caves, which have been divided 
into compartments and fitted for the purpose. 

The park-grounds rise in successive terraces to 
the Hotel Colorado, which was conceived in the same 
spirit of originality which created the improvements 
mentioned. This hotel is constructed upon three 
sides of a large court, containing a miniature lake, fed 
by cold mountain-springs and stocked with trout in- 
tended for the table. In summer the glass partitions 
which in cold weather separate the main dining-room 
from the broad veranda are taken down, and tables 
are set in the open air ; and the guest who may fancy 
a broiled trout for breakfast is privileged to capture 
it himself, in this particular following the practice of 
the patron of restaurants in Mexico, who selects the 
materials of his meal before they have been sent to 
the kitchen. 

The State of Colorado is the best hunting-ground 
left to the American sportsman. The immediate vicin- 
ity of Glenwood Springs contains great numbers of 
deer and an abundance of elk and bear. The Roar- 
ing Fork, a succession of noisy rapids and cataracts 
coursing down th_e timber-clad mountain-side, affords 
e.xcellent trout-fishing, and Trappers Lake is known 
to thousands of gunners and fishermen, either by ex- 
perience or by repute. 



;26 













^^-N -xf-, \ 



127 










128 



SEVEN CASTLES AND RED ROCIi CANON. 

Leaving Glenvvood Springs, the road runs by the 
side of the Roaring Fork for twenty-five miles, to 
Aspen Junction, at the confluence of the Frying Pan, 
where a branch line diverges to the mining-camp 
which is second in importance only to Leadville. 
The Elk Mountains and colossal separate peaks 
make a near horizon upon that side. Here the Roar- 
ing Fork is abandoned in favor of its confluent, and 
almost immediately the splendid cliffs called the 
Seven Castles are seen. These are semi-detached 
masses of red sandstone, varying in tint from a deli- 
cate peachblow to dark red, and towering ponder- 
ously above the little verdured valley of the Frying 
Pan. They are the portals of Red Rock. Canon, 
whose commonplace title covers a long stretch of 
the most exquisite scenery ever encountered in a 
narrow mountain-notch. The white flash of the 
stream, interrupted here and there by still pools that 
reflect the blue of the sky, marks an intricately wind- 
ing upward path, disclosing at every turn new love- 
liness of woodland bowers, above which glimmer 
through evergreen-trees, or flush broadly with un- 
obscured faces, the brilliant masses of the rock for- 
mation. 

HAGERMAN PASS. 

Red granite cliff's follow, and scenes of widening 
grandeur. Although for many miles the grade has 
been steadily upward, the real ascent of the Hager- 
man Pass now begins. This crossing of the Con- 
tinental Divide is the loftiest railroad-pass in Amer- 
ica. The Frying Pan shows the way nearly to the 
summit, until its headwaters are reached at Loch 
Ivanhoe, i i,ooo feet above the sea. There is a far- 
ther climb of 500 feet, then the train enters a long 
tunnel, and the Pacific Slope is past. When the 

129 yj., 




traveler next sees the light of day a long descent of 
the backbone* of the Divide lies before him, to be 
accomplished by means of loops, trestles and other 
scientific solutions of prodigious difficulties. Numer- 
ous snow-sheds of heavy timbers cover points ex- 
posed to the avalanche or the drift of snows, and in 
the winter season rotary snow-plows and a large 
force of laborers are kept constantly on hand to pre- 
vent any delay to travel. 

In this unique descent of a seemingly impassable 
barrier the grandest of mountain-views are inevitably 
afforded. The wide detours necessitated by grade 
and topography face in turn every point of the com- 
pass, overhung by receding summits and looking off 
through profound notches or along the vertiginous 
downward-sweeping slopes to a world below. Alpine 
travelers pay the price of extreme fatigue and imperil 
their lives for the sensations of such an experience, 
which for the American tourist is only an incident, 
comfortably enjoyed without exertion or danger. 

LEADVILLE. 

Just beyond the foot of Hagerman Pass, upon the 
swell of the mountain-flank, stands the great min- 
ing-city, at an elevation of 10,000 feet. In April, 
i860, the first gold-claims were staked out in Cali- 
fornia Gulch, and within three months thereafter 10,- 
000 miners had located there. Two claims are said to 
have yielded $75,000 in the space of sixty days, and 
single individuals are known to have been rewarded 
by $100,000 for the work of one summer. In a lit- 
tle more than a year the field was exhausted, nearly 
$10,000,000 of the yellow metal having been carried 
away. In the digging of ditches to facilitate the 
washing of the auriferous gravel, masses of a heavy 
black rock were so commonly encountered as to 
prove a considerable annoyance, but they were 
130 



thrown aside and forgotten. These were the famous 
silver carbonates, whose value was later revealed by 
a merely curious assay; and the first body of carbon- 
ate ore to be worked formed the entire mass of a cliff 
in California Gulch which had been execrated by in- 
numerable gold-diggers. The richest ores were not 
among the first to be developed, and prospecting 
and small workings were increasingly carried on for 
a series of years until, in 1878, two prospectors who 
were " grub-staked " by Mr. Tabor (since Senator) 
chanced to be crossing Fryer Hill and sat down to 
imbibe casual refreshment from a jug of whisky. By 
the time they. had become satisfactorily refresh3d all 
kinds of ground looked alike to them, and in pure 
imbecility, without the slightest justification, they be- 
gan to dig where they had been sitting. They un- 
covered the ore-body of the famous Little Pittsburg 
mine, which, so exuberantly whimsical is occasional 
chance, has since proved to be the only point on the 
entire hill where the ledge approaches so near the sur- 
face. Then ensued a second scramble of the multi- 
tude for place in this marvelous treasure-region, and 
the wildest excitement reigned. In the fourteen years 
that have pass.d the carbonate ores have not been 
exhausted; on the contrary, new finds are still of fre- 
quent occurrence, and the city of Leadville is now 
known to be underlaid with bodies of that ore. But 
the carbonate era has probably passed its climax, and 
is giving place to the sulphide era, miUions of tons of 
sulphide ores having already been blocked out in 
Iron, Breece and Carbonate hills. The geological 
position of the new ores promises even greater extent 
and value than the carbonates have realized, although 
they are less cheaply worked. And should the sul- 
phides at length be exhausted no one can safely 
prophesy that this extraordinarily versatile locality 
will not present the world with some new compound 
132 




which on analysis shall prove unexpectedly rich in 
precious metals. 

The carbonate discovery revived the almost-de- 
populated camp, and for the space cf a few years 
thereafter Leadville was nearly as notorious for law- 
lessness and personal insecurity as for the richness 
and number of its mines. That phase has been out- 
lived; order, quiet and- the refinements that belong 
to a wealthy city in our day having long been per- 
manently established. The tourist will, however, 
find it distinctly individual and full of present inter- 
est, and the wonderful romance of its past, which 
reads like a tale of unbridled imagination, invests it 
with an imperishable glamour. 

KUENA VISTA. 

Stretching southward for thirty miles between the 
Park and Saguache ranges, at an equal distance east 
from Leadville, lies an idyllic valley of the Arkan- 
sas River. At the head of this valley stands Euena 
Vista, like a Swiss village. Harvard, Yale and 
Princeton mountains, each loftier than Pike's Peak, 
rise close behind it upon the west, and upon the 
south the white summits of the Sangre de Cristo 
Range are discernible. The train follows the sweep 
of a savage rocky salient half a thousand feet above 
the valley, and the view is downward upon the white 
town and over the far stretch of sunlit meadow, whose 
penetrating beauty and perfect peace is enhanced by 
the grandeur of the College Peaks, which from the 
grass-grown and timbered slopes of their feet rise to 
heights and forms of awful sublimity. Buena Vi>ta 
means in the Spanish a comprehensive outlook, 
rather than a beautiful scene. It is a euphonious 
name, and serves well enough in Colorado, where 
among so much that is superlative one learns to be 
temperate in the use of adjectives; but anywhere 
133 










.^^r#?>»*«^^ 




else in the world this should have been Vista Gloriosa. 
It is a peep of paradise, a dream of a happy vale 
where the blessed might dwell in joy forever. 




(GRANITE CANON. 

After leaving- Buena Vista a ridge of 9,500 feet 
elevation is crossed to the broad level meadows of 
South Park, a fertile tract of not less than 1,500 
square miles watered by the forks of the South Platte 
River, One of these forks is followed to and through 
an impressive gorge, eleven miles long, a narrow, 
ruggedly picturesque channel sparsely timbered with 
evergreen and walled by huge granite-cliffs. A tow- 
ering rock-cone stands midway, and at the eastern 
end lies the beautiful sheet of water known as Lake 
George. 

CRIPPLE CREEK 

The famous gold-camp lies eighteen miles south 
from Divide, a station thirteen miles east of Granite 
Canon, but tourists commonly find it convenient to 
make the trip as one of the numerous excursions 
from Manitou, twenty-two miles farther on. Between 
Divide and Cripple Creek stages run daily, but a 
134 




135 




railroad-branch will shortly cover the distance. It 
is an exhilarating- mountain-ride through forests and 
gorges, over hillsides and along pleasant intervales, 
to an elevation of 10,000 feet, above which the 
closely neighboring Pike's Peak seems to shrink to 
the small dignity of a wind-swept hill. It is such a 
ride as the Western traveler commonly knew before 
railroads relegated the stage to a very subordinate 
function. The ponderous creaking Concord coach, 
lumbering at the heels of half a dozen spirited horses 
and driven by a veteran who reeks of border expe- 
rience and reminiscence, is none too familiar to the 
modern tourist. One finds it here, and it unmistak- 
ably adds zest to the magnificent changing scenery. 
There is no lack of passengers, and although the 
talk is mainly of mines, and claims and prospects, 
just as in other parts it is of the price of stocks or 
lands, the high romance of a stage-ride in the Rock- 
ies, which custom can not wither, soon sets this aside 
for reminiscence and tales of adventure. Your 
bronzed unpretentious companions have seen vicissi- 
tude and know how to tell a story of dramatic or 
humorous interest. 

Fremont is believed to be the corporate name of 
the Cripple Creek district, which includes three or 
four aggregations of houses; but the spirit of a min- 
ing-camp is against any but names of distinct flavor, 
and Cripple Creek is sanctioned by common usage, 
although Squaw Gulch, Poverty Gulch, Mound City 
and Barry are distinguishing titles of immediate lo- 
calities. The first glimpse of the scene is from the 
summit of a last high hill. The topography is peace- 
ful and somewhat English in type. Cattle and 
burros graze on smooth-turfed slopes, and there is 
no sign of rock save what has been excavated from 
beneath the grass. It is the last place a tyro would 
look for gold-lodes, and experienced prospectors 
136 




were long enough in finding it. The leads are 
blind, concealed like subterranean springs. Men 
dig through the thin layer of soil, and drill and 
blast the exposed ledge. Whether they shall stumble 
upon an Anaconda mine, or after long and costly 
labors possess only a sink-hole to catch the fall of 
rain, is wholly a matter of speculation. The explo- 
ration has been pursued with feverish energy, and 
the green slopes are heaped with the debris of numer- 
ous excavations until they resemble a scattered vil- 
lage of gigantic prairie-dog homes. There are placer- 
claims as well. Everybody in Cripple Creek owns a 
claim, of the one sort or the other. Even the hotel 
porter is no exception, and when he charges you 
"two bits" for blacking your boots you perceive 
with admiration that you are contributing to the cost 
of his assessment-work, besides ameliorating the 
nature of his employment by that scale of remunera- 
tion. 

137 



The shops and houses of the main street have the 
motley aspect that belongs to young mining-towns, as 
if they had been fragments cyclonically torn from 
some distant original anchorage, plumped down here 
among the mountains, and preempted without any 
effort at rearrangement or resuscitation. A coherent 
structure here and there breaks the wild jumble of 
discordant forms, and a neatly painted sign or two 
contrasts with the multitude of advertising-legends 
that have been grotesquely lettered by unskilled 
hands. Yet the whole has pictorial charm, and it is 
the inevitable phase of a purely speculative commu- 
nity, every member of which hopes at no distant 
time in the future to turn back upon this primitive 
life, more or less a Croesus. They are but pilgrims 
here, heaven is their home. And they have no time 
to squander, no means or energy to waste, upon 
refinements in such an hour. 

Naturally there is no restriction upon saloons or 
gambling-houses; and in the dance-halls, that open 
directly from the street, gallants waltz with cigar in 
mouth, and between the numbers their partners do 
not disdain the refreshment of whisky straight. 
Yet the town is singularly free from boisterousness 
and violence, even after dark, when the stranger 
must fairly grope his way, and the neighborhood of 
(;he really first-class hold around the corner is silent 
and peaceful. The wildest period in the history of 
a mining-camp is the first few months of its notoriety. 
Desperadoes and adventurers of every sort are at- 
tracted by the high fever that marks the earliest 
stage, only to depart when the recklessness of the 
scramble for place has given way to legitimate devel- 
opment of the relatively few valuable finds. The 
actual prosperity is not measured by e.Kcitement. or 
inflated population. 

138 




^.^-^"^^^ 



Of the twelve or fifteen thousand who in the space 
of a few months thronged to the two lonely ranches 
on Cripple Creek, perhaps one-third have remained; 
but of these, the number who will win their wager 
must prove pathetically small, although not a few 
mines of enormous determined value and many claims 
of great promise have been discovered. 

There is no hazard so seductive and inspiriting as 
that of seeking a mine, but there is a bleak and piti- 
ful side to it all, as may occur to you in the occasional 
anguished intervals of the night when you hear a 
Cripple Creek jackass pour out the impassioned mel- 
ody of his soul. '' Ha7v . . . / E-ha7v . , / 
E-haw! E-haiv , . . /" he cries; poor devil of a 
poet blurting a strident night-piece through his 
Punchinello visage; or Mephistophelian commenta- 
tor on the vanity of vanities; or what you will 



PIKE S PEAK REGION. 

After Divide comes in rapid succession that extraor- 
dinary series of resorts which every year, between 
June and September, attracts unnumbered thousands 
of visitors. The list is included in a distance of 
twenty- five miles along an eastward slope from 8,500 
down to 6,000 feet elevation, and while each differs 
in individual allurements, all alike are characterized 
by transparent exhilarating air, vivid tones of verdure 
and myriad flowers, streams, waterfalls, small lakes, 
fountains, forests, red rock-sculptures, gorges and 
mountains, always mountains, leading the eye pro- 
gressively to their kingly peak; by white tents in the 
shade of pines and aspens, neat hamlets and esthetic 
caravansaries hugging Cyclopean walls; by fashion- 
able equipages, equestrians and an animated holiday 
throng on foot; and by a buoyant breadth which all 
the multitude cannot crowd or oppress. Our route 
leads consecutively through Woodland Park, Mani- 
139 








y... 



tou Park, Green Mountain Falls, Ute Park, Cascade 
Canon, Manitou and Colorado Springs, by way of 
Ute Pass, the old stage-route and thoroughfare of 
westward-facing fortune-hunters through che heart 
of the Rockies. Woodland Park stands at the head 
of the pass, and offers the noblest view of Pike's Peak 
obtainable from the viesa. Manitou Park (not to be 
confounded with Manitou proper) is reached by way 
of Woodland Park, the nearest railway station, a 
four-in-hand Concord stage-coach, conveying the vis- 
itor over the interval of six miles. Here accommo- 
dations are provided on the cottage system, with a 
centrally located casino in which are the public din- 
ing-rooms, parlors, and the like. Green Mountain 
Falls is one of the loveliest of the group. In the 
heart of the beautiful valley is a lake surrounded by 
hotels and an annual encampment of tourists in 
tents and cottages. Mountain-terraces, with brill, 
iant outlooks, cascades tumbling over the clins, and 
a thousand retreats in gorge and grove, make up its 
special charms, Ute Park is another mountain mead- 
ow, fringed by the forest and tucked snugly up 
against precipitous slopes, along whose base, through 
the shadow of spruce and pine, a boulevard extends. 
It is called the Eden of the Pass. At Cascade Canon 
the mountain-stream descends 2,000 feet in a dis- 
tance of three-quarters of a mile, by a series of falls 
through a gorge that is filled with the odor of wild 
flowers. At this point begins the carriage-road to 
the summit of the peak. 

With such categorical mention must these five 
idyllic resorts be dismissed, each of which is worthy 
of lengthy description, to find space for the two more 
celebrated which remain. 

140 







Descending the Ute Pass by way of winking rock 
tunnels, by trestles and canon brinks and bottoms, 
past the successive bits of wonderland already speci- 
fied and innumerable ravishing glimpses of forest- 
girt mountain and stream, you come to Manitou, a 
spot of such supernal beauty that even the Utes rose 
to the height of poetic appreciation and named it 
after the Great Spirit. Placed at the very foot of the 
terrible Peak, in the opening of the mountain-notch 
upon the broad plateau, every essence of interior land- 
scape loveliness is showered upon it. It is without 
a flaw, a superlative thing unpicturable to those who 
know only the plains or the shores of the sea; a 
Titania's bower of melting sweetness amid Nature's 
'savagest throes. Marvels are thickly clustered. 
There are grottoes hung with stala<;tites and banked 
with moss-like beds of gleaming crystal-filaments, 
springs tinctured with iron, springs effervescent with 
soda, plains serried with huge isolated rock-sculpt- 
ures, narrow gorges where at the bottom of hun- 
dreds of feet of shadow is scant passage-way, long 
perpendicular lines of white foaming torrent, and soft 
blending flames of color from rosy rock and herbage 
and flower. 

The waters of the Soda Springs are walled in the 
middle of a dainty park in the heart of the village, 
at night an incandescent lamp gleaming upward 
through their bubbling depths. Millions of gallons 
are exported, but something of the living sparkle on 
the tongue is lost in separation from the surcharged 
fount. Here it is more exuberantly crisp and re- 
freshing than that of the artificial compound which, 
in Eastern cities, presides over the counter most dear 
to the feminine heart. The flow is unstinted, and 
is free to all. The Iron Springs are upon the hill- 
141 




/f/f-'' 



side, within easy strolling-distance. Bothi are dis- 
tinctly beneficial to health, and are frequented by a 
merry multitude throughout the day and early night. 
Grand Caverns and the Cave of the Winds are near 
neighbors, divided by a single ridge and doubtless 
intercommunicating by undiscovered passages. Both 
are elevated far above the town, the approach to the 
one climbing past the Rainbow Falls along a steep 
slope that looks off across the entrancing landscape 
of the valley to the mountain background, the other 
opening in the side of Williams Canon, through the 
notch of whose magnificent upreaching walls there 
is at one point a sharp turn where an unskillful driver 
could hardly hope to pass without grazing a wheel. 
It must have been a critical place in the old days 
when stages were "held up," for the miscalculation 
of an inch would have meant catastrophe, in the wake 
of plunging horses. The two caves are very similar, 
narrow underground corridors opening into a series 
of high-vaulted chambers hung with stalactites and 
glittering in magnesium light like the jewel-caves of 
the Arabian Nights. The floors are dry, but through 
the limestone walls fine moisture oozes, depositing 
the stalagmite in strange and often esthetic forms, 
in addition to the pendent icicles of rock. There 
are striking suggestions of intelligible statuary, and 
innumerable imitations of natural objects, animal 
and vegetable. There is the Grand Organ, really? 
natural xylophone, a cluster of stalactites of varying 
proportions upon which entire tunes are played with 
approximate accuracy, with occasional tones that are 
as mournfully impressive as a midnight-bell. Jewel 
Casket, Concert Hall, Bridal Chamber and the like 
are names bestowed upon different compartments, 
and numberless particular formations have individual 
titles. Grand Caverns and the Cave of the Winds 
each requires at least an hour for the tviost casual 
142 




exploration. Thousands of visiting-cards liave been 
left upon the walls. 

A park of 500 acres covered with protruding rock 
figures of striking form and beauty constitutes the 
Garden of the Gods. The names applied to these 
suggestive forms of sandstone and gypsum describe 
their eccentric appearance. Toadstools, Mushroom 
Park, Hedgehog, Ant Eater, Lizard, Turtle, Ele- 
phant, Lion, Camels, American Eagle, Seal and Bear, 
Sphinx, Siamese Twins, Flying Dutchman, Irish 
Washerwoman, Punch, Judy and Baby, Lady of the 
Garden, Three Graces, Stage Coach, and Graveyard 
are a few. There are others which rise to the dig- 
nity of pure grandeur. Pictures of the Gateway, a 
magnificent portal 330 feet high, and of Cathedral 
Spires and Balanced Rock have been admired all over 
the world. Here, as elsewhere in the West, beyond 
the eastern bounds of Colorado and New Mexico, 
color is an element of charm in landscape even 
greater than contour. These rocks are white and 
yellow and red, and in the crystalline air, that 
scorns a particle of haze, the scene is indescribably 
clear and sharp to the eye, and as vivid as an enthu- 
siastic water-color. Drawings in black-and-white 
inadequately communicate them to a reader. 

Contiguous to the Garden of the Gods lies Glen 
Eyrie, the private estate of General Palmer, covering 
1,300 acres. This is open to the public except on 
Sunday. Queen Canon, fourteen miles long, the 
Major Domo, cliffs of blazing color, and tree-em- 
bowered drives and green-houses are attractive feat- 
ures of Glen Eyrie. 

ASCENT OK pike's PEAK. 

The majesty of the Rocky Mountains can not be 
beckoned wholly into intimacy. There is a quality 
that holds unbendingly aloof from fellows;hip, if not 
144 




'^^^^C'j^^;^^^^ 







from perfect comprehension. Ihe sea is sympathet- 
ic in moods. Soul quailing in tumult, it softens to 
moments of superficial loveliness that would have 
you forget the murderous hunger that lies the length 
of your stature under wave. Not so the mountain- 
peaks. They are the sublimest personalities known 
to earth; the hugeous, towering imperturbable. They 
joy not, lament not, rage not. The chill teolian of 
upper air and the roar of distant avalanche do not 
stir the profundity of their rapt contemplation. Pale, 
austere, passionless, and effable in grandeur, they 
rise like an apotheosis of pure intellect over the spheres 
of confused emotion; or, if you like it better, they 
stand for lofty spiritual reach. It augurs well of 
man that he can endure their proximity. A nation of 
mountaineers should be unequaled in the qualities of 
virtue, intrepidity and clarity of brain. The legend 
of William Tell, though but a legend, is a true ex- 
pression of the spirit of the people of Switzerland, 
that brooks no fetter of tyranny. And yo;i will fear, 
not love, the mountains if you have not heights within 
145 



to match them. So every genuine lover of a topmost 
pinnacle has something sterling in him. From the 
knot of excursionists you will see him steal away to 
be alone in the solemn exaltation of the hour. 

There are many summits in Colorado more ele- 
vated than Pike's Peak, but they are difficult, and 
the difference in height is not appreciable in effect. 
Here }OU are lifted above the clouds so far that the 
world lies remote beneath the eye, the neighboring 
towns and cities shrunk to insignificance. Vast is 
the panorama outspread to view. The plain is grown 
indefinite and unsubstantial, like a subdued picture 
floating in the sky; but beyond the langes are piled, 
tier on tier, peak after peak, white-draped or dun in 
a haze of blue. The storm sweeps below, its forked 
lightnings under foot, its rumble of thunder echoing 
faintly up through the thin cold air; and while bois- 
terous deluge rolls over valley and plain you stand 
like Ph(ebus in his chariot of morn , bathed in radiance. 
And there is an hour of incommunicable splendor, 
when the sun rises gleaming like a burnished yellow 
moon through dark cloud-wrappings on the rim of 
fading night, and again when it sinks behind the 
fierce tumbled mountain-chain, gilding the peaks 
with ruddy fire the while dusk spreads beneath like 
a silent submerging sea. 

The ascent, for very many years, wasoftener talked 
of than attempted. Zebulon Pike himself failed, in 
i8o6^ and half a century passed after that before the 
hrst trail was cut, from old Summit Park, a dozen 
miles west of Manitou. That tiail was little used, 
because of its difficulties and dangers. In the sev- 
enties three additional trails were constructed, and in 
1889 the carriage-road from Cascade was completed. 
In 1891 the Cog-Wheel Railway began operation, 
running directly from Manitou to the summit, and 
accomplishing that feat in a distance of nine miles. 
146 




The steepest grade on the road is one foot in four. 
It starts near the Iron Springs, at the mouth of Kn- 
gleman's Canon, and makes the round trip in four 
and a half hours, allowing a stop of forty minutes on 
the peak. Several trains are run daily, in the open 
season, and, moreover, accommodations for the night 
can be had in the old Signal Station, which has been 
made over into a tavern. To those who desire to 
obtain the crowning experience in the easiest manner 
and in the shortest possible time, the ascent by rail 
is recommended. Many, however, prefer the greater 
personal freedom and the fuller enjoyment of scenes 
by the way offered by the carriage-road from Cascade. 
Although that is si.xteen miles long, it has ample re- 
wards for all its fatigues. 

The altitude of Pike's Peak is 14,147 feet above 
sea-level, and its height above the starting-point of 
the Cog- Wheel Railway in Manitou is 7,518 feet. 
The altitude of Mount Washington, in New Hamp- 
shire, is 6,293 feet, that of the Rigi, in Switzerland, 
5,832 feet, and of the Jungfrau, 13,667 feet, above 
the sea. 

COLORADO SPRINGS. 

Closely backed by the Rockies, whose eastern 
contour is a protecting semicircle that opens to the 
Great Plains, this pretty city stands upon a level floor, 
divided by broad tree-shaded avenues into squares as 
regular as those of a chess-board, which it strongly 
resembles when viewed from the slopes and pinnacle 
of Pike's Peak. There are attractive drives in every 
direction, out upon the plains, through the canons 
and up the mountain-sides. Only six miles distant 
from Manitou, with which it is connected by an elec- 
tric street-railway in addition to the steam-railroad, 
and similarly joined to Broadmoor Casino and Chey- 
enne Canon upon the other hand, Colorado Springs 
147 





is perhaps the most fashionable and most populous 
of the special resorts of Colorado. It is a city of homes 
ol the wealthy, with some 12,000 inhabitants. 

The Casino at Broadmoor is an attractive rendez- 
vous near the mouth of Cheyenne Caiion, by the side 
^ of a pretty lake, where almost nightly a brilliant illu- 
mination may be seen and the sounds of music and 
gaiety heard. 

A little beyond Broadmoor the car-line ends at 
the foot of the canon, whose approach lies between 
a swelling grass-covered rise upon the one hand and 
a shrubby hillside upon the other. Here begins a 
comfortable carriage- road, and conveyances and bur- 
ros are procurable. The road gradually ascends 
through groves of evergreen and deciduous trees, 
crossing and recrossing a clear mountain-stream by 
rustic bridges, on through the gateway of the Pillars 
of Hercules into a defile where rock-walls rise many 
hundred feet overhead, and needles, spires, cones, 
and irregular crags lift head above and behind one 
another, some bleakly bare, some fringed with shrubs 
and trees, prodigious rocks serrying the mountain- 
side to heights where details of form are lost to the 
eye and only broad effects of color and ebb and 
swell are intelligible. The carriage-road leads direct- 
ly to the foot of Seven Falls, to whose head the vis- 
itor may climb by a long stairway. A short distance 
below the falls a circuitous narrow trail diverges 
toward the left from the carriage-road, up which 
burros are ridden to the upper level, where one can 
look down upon this entire series of brilliant cas- 
cades. Arrived here many diverging paths invite 
the visitor. The log-cabin where Helen Hunt Jack- 
son loved to spend much of her time in summer is 
at hand, and the former site of her grave, marked 
by a huge heap of stones, may be reached by a steep 
path to the left. Glens and rocky eminences, bushy 
148 




retreats by the side of the streams, and fern and 
flower decked banks entice to farther exploration. 
Day after day many return to the fresh beauties of 
the spot, each time discovering some new delight 
among the thousand charms of the mountain-wilds. 

DENVER. 

To visit Denver involves a side excursion from 
Colorado Springs, the distance being seventy-five 
miles. It is a queen among fair cities, standing upon 
a broad elevated plain with mountain horizons. 
These mountains are sometimes white ramparts of 
unearthly beauty, and there is an ever-shifting play of 
light and shadow upon them. Its enormous smelters, 
with towering smoke-vomiting stacks, can not seri- 
ously deface its beauty, and themselves are an in- 
teresting and instructive sight, for $25, 000,000 of 
gold and silver are there extracted from Rocky 
Mountain ores every year. 

The Queen City of the Plains has periods of win- 
ter cold and snow, but commonly the air is delight- 
fully temperate when Eastern cities are ice-bound 
and shivering. Almost every part of Denver can be 
quickly visited by electric or cable street-cars. 




149 




1^ 



HOMEWARD. 

fjORTY miles below Colorado Springs, in 
the Arkansas Valley, thirty miles east 
from the mountains, stands Pueblo, an- 
other city of smelters, and of immense 
steel, iron, and copper works. Here is the Colorado 
Mineral Palace, a large and costly auditorium of 
modernized Egyptian architecture, whose domes are 
supported by gilded columns, around whose bases 
are arranged plate-glass cases filled with choice 
specimens of Colorado minerals, which constitute 
the most valuable collection of minerals in the world. 
It is open every day to vistors. 

Sixty miles east from Pueblo one comes again to 
La Junta, the junction-point in Southeastern Col- 
orado which was passed on the outward journey. 
From this point to Chicago and St. Louis the scenes 
would be familiar except for the fact that many lo- 
calities which were formerly passed in the night are 
now seen by day. 

The marvels of the West, however, have now 
been left behind, and the tourist may be expected 
to be absorbed in pleasurable anticipation of his 
home-coming. He returns not as he departed, for 
such a journey as that which now draws near its 
close possesses an emphatic educating value. He 
150 



knows definitely now about those features of our 
Western empire which before were to him a vague 
imagining, inadequately, and perhaps wrongly, con- 
ceived. 

And, not the least valuable of human accjuisitions, 
henceforward he will have a storv. 



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